B; 


COFFEE  AND 
REPARTEE 


HARPERS 

BLACK  &WHITE 

SERIES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

C.DeGarino 


[Page  8. 
YOU    RELATED    TO    GOVERNOR    McKINLEY?'" 


COFFEE    AND    REPARTEE 


JOHN  KENDRICKABANGS 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW   YORK    AND    LONDON 
HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 


I899 


Harper's  "Black  a 

Illustrated.     321110,  ( 

nd  White"  Series. 

^loth,  50  cents  each. 

LOWSIL.     Bv  G.  W.  Curtis. 
GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS.     By 

By  Brander  Mutthews. 

thews. 
THE  DECISION   OK  TH«  COUKT. 

IN    AFRICA.      Bv    Henry 
Stanley. 

I>K 

M. 

thews. 
A    FAMILY   CANOE   TRIP.      By 

Annie  Fields.  ' 

By 

By 

By 

By 

John  Kendrick  Bangs. 

Naomi  Tain  urn. 
GILES    COREY,   YEOMAN. 

John  Kemlrick  Ban<rs. 

SEEN  FROM  THE  SADDL*. 

AGO.     By  Thomas  Twining. 

BY    W.   I).  HOWEI.LS. 
Farces:    A   LETTKR   OF   INT 

EDWIN    BOOTH.      By    Laurence 
Hutton. 
PHILLIPS    BCOOKS.       By    Rev. 
Arthur  Brooks,  D.D. 

POT.  —  THE     GARKOTKKS 
FIVE    O'CLOCK    TEA.  —  1 
MOUSE  -  TRAP.  —  A    I.IK 
STORY.  —  EVK.MNG   DP.ESS 
THB  UNEXPECTED  GUESTS 

'HE 

Co|,pee. 
PUBLISHED  BY   HARPER  <S 

MY  YEAR  i.v  A  LOG  CABIN. 
;    BROTHERS,   NEW    YORK. 

Copyright,  1893,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 
All  rights  reserved. 


TO 

S.  M 


387723 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

"  '  Are  you  related  to  Governor  McKinley  ?'  "  .  Frontispiece 

"  Alarmed  the  cook  " 5 

'"What  are  the  first  symptoms  of  insanity?'"  ...  13 

'"  Reading  Webster's  Dictionary '" 17 

"'I  stuck  to  the  pigs'" ,  ,  23 

The  conspirators  .  .' ....  25 

'"  Weren't  your  ears  long  enough  ?'"  .....  33 

"  'The  corks  popped  to  some  purpose  last  night'"  37 

"  '  If  you  could  spare  so  little  as  one  flame  '  "  .  .  .  43 

The  school-master  as  a  cooler ,  47 

'"Reading  the  Sunday  newspapers '" 51 

Bobbo ,  =  5 

Wooing  the  Muse 67 

'"He  gave  up  jokes'" , 7. 

"  '  A  little  garden  of  my  own,  where  I  could  raise  an 

occasional  can  of  tomatoes "'  .  , 75 

"  'A  hind-quarter  of  lamb  gambolling  about  its  native 

heath '  " 77 

"  'The  gladsome  click  of  the  lawn-mower'  "  ....  80 


PAGE 

'"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you  write  for  the  pa- 
pers?'"   85 

"' We  wooed  the  self-same  maid '" 87 

Curing  insomnia 91   . 

"  Holding  his  plate  up  to  the  light  " 97 

"'I    believe   you'd  blow   out   the   gas  in  your  bed- 

'* '  His  fairy  stories  were  told  him  in  words  of  ten  syl- 
lables '" 105 

"  '  I  thought  my  father  a  mean-spirited  assassin  '  "  .     .  109 

"  '  Mrs.  S.  brought  him  to  the  point  of  proposing  '"  .  115 
"  '  Hoorah!' cried  the  Idiot,  grasping  Mr.  Pedagog  by 

the  hand' " ,    .     .                       .  nq 


THE  guests  at  Mrs.  Smithers's  high-class 
boarding-house  for  gentlemen  had  assem- 
bled as  usual  lor  breakfast,  and  in  a  few 
moments  Mary,  the  dainty  waitress,  en- 
tered with  the  steaming  coffee,  the  mush, 
.  and  the  rolls. 

The  School-master,  who,  by-the-way,  was 
suspected  by  Mrs.  Smithers  of  having  inten- 
tions, and  who  for  that  reason  occupied  the 
chair  nearest  the  lady's  heart,  folded  up  the 
morning  paper,  and  placing  it  under  him  so 
that  no  one  else  could  get  it,  observed,  quite 
genially  for  him,  "  It  was  very  wet  yester- 
day." 

"I  didn't  find  it  so,"  observed  a  young 
man  seated  half-way  down  the  table,  who 
was  by  common  consent  called  the  Idiot, 


because  of  his  "  views."  "  In  fact,  I  was  very 
dry.  Curious  thing,  I'm  always  dry  on  rainy 
days.  I  am  one  of  the  kind  of  men  who 
know  that  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  stay 
in  when  it  rains,  or  to  carry  an  umbrella 
when  it  is  not  possible  to  stay  at  home,  or, 
having  no  home,  like  ourselves,  to  remain 
cooped  up  in  stalls,  or  stalled  up  in  coops, 
as  you  may  prefer." 

"You  carried  an  umbrella,  then  ?"  queried 
the  landlady,  ignoring  the  Idiot's  shaft  at  the 
size  of  her  "  elegant  and  airy  apartments  ' 
with  an  ease  born  of  experience. 

"  Yes,  madame,"  returned  the  Idiot,  quite 
unconscious  of  what  was  coming. 

"Whose?"  queried  the  lady,  a  sarcastic 
smile  playing  about  her  lips. 

"That  I  cannot  say,  Mrs.  Smithers,"  re- 
plied the  Idiot,  serenely, "  but  it  is  the  one 
you  usually  carry." 

"  Your  insinuation,  sir,"  said  the  School- 
master, coming  to  the  landlady's  rescue,  "  is 
an  unworthy  one.  The  umbrella  in  ques- 
tion is  mine.  It  has  been  in  my  possession 
for  five  years." 

"  Then,"  replied  the  Idiot,  unabashed,  "  it 
is  time  you  returned  it.  Don't  you  think 


men's  morals  are  rather  lax  in  this  matter 
of  umbrellas,  Mr.  Whitechoker?"  he  added, 
turning  from  the  School-master,  who  began 
to  show  signs  of  irritation. 

"  Very,"  said  the  Minister,  running  his  fin- 
ger about  his  neck  to  make  the  collar  which 
had  been  sent  home  from  the  laundry  by 
mistake  set  more  easily — "  very  lax.  At  the 
last  Conference  I  attended,  some  person, 
forgetting  his  high  office  as  a  minister  in 
the  Church,  walked  off  with  my  umbrella 
without  so  much  as  a  thank  you ;  and  it 
was  embarrassing  too,  because  the  rain  was 
coming  down  in  bucketfuls." 

"  What  did  you  do  ?"  asked  the  landlady, 
sympathetically.  She  liked  Mr.  Whitechok- 
er's  sermons,  and,  beyond  this,  he  was  a 
more  profitable  boarder  than  any  of  the 
others,  remaining  home  to  luncheon  every 
day  and  having  to  pay  extra  therefor. 

"  There  was  but  one  thing  left  for  me  to 
do.  I  took  the  bishop's  umbrella,"  said  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  blushing  slightly. 

"  But  you  returned  it,  of  course  ?"  said  the 
Idiot. 

"  I  intended  to,  but  I  left  it  on  the  train 
on  my  way  back  home  the  next  day,"  re- 


plied  the  clergyman,  visibly  embarrassed  by 
the  Idiot's  unexpected  cross-examination. 

"It's  the  same  way  with  books,"  put  in  the 
Bibliomaniac,  an  unfortunate  being  whose 
love  of  rare  first  editions  had  brought  him 
down  from  affluence  to  boarding.  "  Many  a 
man  who  wouldn't  steal  a  dollar  would  run 
off  with  a  book.  I  had  a  friend  once  who 
had  a  rare  copy  of  Through  Africa  by  Day- 
light. It  was  a  beautiful  book.  Only  twenty- 
five  copies  printed.  The  margins  of  the 
pages  were  four  inches  wide,  and  the  title- 
page  was  rubricated ;  the  frontispiece  was 
colored  by  hand,  and  the  seventeenth  page 
had  one  of  the  most  amusing  typographical 
errors  on  it — "  i 

"Was  there  any  read  ing -matter  in  the 
book?"  queried  the  Idiot,  blowing  softly  on 
a  hot  potato  that  was  nicely  balanced  on 
the  end  of  his  fork. 

"Yes,  a  little;  but  it  didn't  amount  to 
much,"  returned  the  Bibliomaniac.  "  But, 
you  know,  it  isn't  as  reading-matter  that 
men  like  myself  care  for  books.  We  have 
a  higher  notion  than  that.  It  is  as  a  speci- 
men of  book -making  that  we  admire  a 
chaste  bit  of  literature  like  Through  Afri- 


ca  by  Daylight.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  my 
friend  had  this  book,  and  he'd  extra-illus- 
trated it.  He  had  pictures  from  all  parts  of 
the  world  in  it,  and  the  book  had  grown 
from  a  volume  of  one  hundred  pages  to 
four  volumes  of  two  hundred  pages  each." 

"  And  it  was  stolen  by  a  highly  honora- 
ble friend,  I  suppose  ?"  queried  the  Idiot. 

"  Yes,  it  was  stolen — and  my  friend  never 
knew  by  whom,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"What?"  asked  the  Idiot,  in  much  sur- 
prise. "  Did  you  never  confess  ?" 

It  was  very  fortunate  for  the  Idiot  that 
the  buckwheat  cakes  were  brought  on  at 
this  moment.  Had  there  not  been  some 
diversion  of  that  kind,  it  is  certain  that  the 
Bibliomaniac  would  have  assaulted  him. 

"  It  is  very  kind  of  Mrs.  Smithers,'  I 
think, "said  the  School-master,  "to  provide 
us  with  such  delightful  cakes  as  these  free 
of  charge." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Idiot,  helping  himself  to 
six  cakes.  "  Very  kind  indeed,  although  I 
must  say  they  are  extremely  economical 
from  an  architectural  point  of  view — which 
is  to  say,  they  are  rather  fuller  of  pores  than 
of  buckwheat.  I  wonder  why  it  is,"  he  con- 


tinued,  possibly  to  avert  the  landlady's  re- 
taliatory comments — "  I  wonder  why  it  is 
that  porous  plasters  and  buckwheat  cakes 
are  so  similar  in  appearance  ?" 

"  And  so  widely  different  in  their  respec- 
tive effects  on  the  system,"  put  in  a  genia) 
old  gentleman  who  occasionally  imbibed, 
seated  next  to  the  Idiot. 

"  I  fail  to  see  the  similarity  between  a 
buckwheat  cake  and  a  porous  plaster,"  said 
the  School-master,  resolved,  if  possible,  to 
embarrass  the  Idiot. 

"  You  don't,  eh  ?"  replied  the  latter.  "  Then 
it  is  very  plain,  sir,  that  you  have  never  eaten 
a  porous  plaster." 

To  this  the  School-master  could  find  no 
reasonable  reply,  and  he  took  refuge  in 
silence.  Mr.  Whitechoker  tried  to  look 
severe ;  the  gentleman  who  occasionally 
imbibed  smiled  all  over;  the  Bibliomaniac 
ignored  the  remark  entirely,  not  having  as 
yet  forgiven  the  Idiot  for  his  gross  insinua- 
tion regarding  his  friend's  Edition  de  luxe 
of  Through  Africa  by  Daylight ;  Mary,  the 
maid,  who  greatly  admired  the  Idiot,  not  so 
much  for  his  idiocy  as  for  the  aristocratic 
manner  in  which  he  carried  himself,  and  the 


truly  striking  striped  shirts  he  wore,  left  the 
room  in  a  convulsion  of  laughter  that  so 
alarmed  the  cook  below-stairs  that  the  next 
platterful  of  cakes  were  more  like  tin  plates 
than  cakes;  and  as  for  Mrs.  Smithers,  that 
worthy  woman  was  speechless  with  wrath. 
But  she  was  not  paralyzed  apparently,  for 
reaching  down  into  her  pocket  she  brought 
forth  a  small  piece  of  paper,  on  which  was 
written  in  detail  the  "  account  due  "  of  the 
Idiot. 

"  I'd  like  to  have  this  settled,  sir,"  she 
said,  with  some  asperity. 

"  Certainly,  my  dear  madame,"  replied 
the  Idiot,  unabashed — "  certainly.  Can  you 
change  a  check  for  a  hundred  ?" 

No,  Mrs.  Smithers  could  not. 

"Then  I  shall  have  to  put  off  paying  the 
account  until  this  evening,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  But,"  he  added,  with  a  glance  at  the 
amount  of  the  bill,  "  are  you  related  to 
Governor  McKinley, Mrs.  Smithers?" 

"  I  am  not,"  she  returned,  sharply.  "  My 
mother  was  a  Partington." 

"  I  only  asked,"  said  the  Idiot,  apologeti- 
cally, "  because  I  am  very  much  interested 
in  the  subject  of  heredity,  and  you  may  not 


know  it,  but  you  and  he  have  each  a  marked 
tendency  towards  high-tariff  bills." 

And  before  Mrs.  Smithers  could  think  of 
anything  to  say,  the  Idiot  was  on  his  way 
down  town  to  help  his  employer  lose  money 
on  Wall  Street. 


II 


"  Do  you  know,  I  sometimes  think—" 
began  the  Idiot,  opening  and  shutting  the 
silver  cover  of  his  watch  several  times  with 
a  snap,  with  the  probable,  and  not  alto- 
gether laudable,  purpose  of  calling  his 
landlady's  attention  to  the  fact — of  which 
she  was  already  painfully  aware — that  break- 
fast was  fifteen  minutes  late. 

"  Do  you,  really  ?"  interrupted  the  School- 
master, looking  up  from  his  book  with  an 
air  of  mock  surprise.  "  I  arn  sure  I  never 
should  have  suspected  it." 

"  Indeed  ?"  returned  the  Idiot,  undis- 
turbed by  this  reflection  upon  his  intellect. 
"  I  don't  really  know  whether  that  is  due 
to  your  generally  unsuspicious  nature,  or  to 
your  shortcomings  as  a  mind-reader." 

"  There  are  some  minds,"  put  in  the  land- 
lady at  this  point,  "  that  are  so  small  that 
it  would  certainly  ruin  the  eyes  to  read 
them." 


"  I  have  seen  many  such,"  observed  the 
Idiot,  suavely.  "  Even  our  friend  the  Bibli- 
omaniac at  times  has  seemed  to  me  to  be 
very  absent-minded.  And  that  reminds 
me,  Doctor,"  he  continued,  addressing  him- 
self to  the  medical  boarder.  "  What  is  the 
cause  of  absent-mindedness  ?" 

"  That,"  returned  the  Doctor,  ponder- 
ously, "  is  a  very  large  question.  Absent- 
mindedness,  generally  speaking,  is  the  result 
of  the  projection  of  the  intellect  into  sur- 
roundings other  than  those  which  for  want 
of  a  better  term  I  might  call  the  corporeally 
immediate." 

"  So  I  have  understood,"  said  the  Idiot, 
approvingly.  "And  is  absent-mindedness 
acquired  or  inherent  ?" 

Here  the  Idiot  appropriated  the  roll  of 
his  neighbor. 

"  That  depends  largely  upon  the  case," 
replied  the  Doctor,  nervously.  "  Some  are 
born  absent-minded,  some  achieve  absent- 
mindedness,  and  some  have  absent-minded- 
ness thrust  upon  them." 

"  As  illustrations  of  which  we  might  take, 
for  instance,  I  suppose," said  the  Idiot,  "the 
born  idiot,  the  borrower,  and  the  man  who 


is  knocked  silly  by  the  pole  of  a  truck  on 
Broadway." 

"  Precisely,"  replied  the  Doctor,  glad  to 
get  out  of  the  discussion  so  easily.  He  was 
a  very  young  doctor,  and  not  always  sure 
of  himself. 

"  Or,"  put  in  the  School-master,  "  to  con- 
dense our  illustrations,  if  the  Idiot  would 
kindly  go  out  upon  Broadway  and  encoun- 
ter the  truck,  we  should  find  the  three  com- 
bined in  him." 

The  landlady  here  laughed  quite  heartily, 
and  handed  the  School  -  master  an  extra 
strong  cup  of  coffee. 

"  There  is  a  great  deal  in  what  you  say," 
said  the  Idiot,  without  a  tremor.  "  There 
are  very  few  scientific  phenomena  that  can- 
not be  demonstrated  in  one  way  or  another 
by  my  poor  self.  It  is  the  exception  always 
that  proves  the  rule,  and  in  my  case  you  find 
a  consistent  converse  exemplification  of  all 
three  branches  of  absent-mindedness." 

"  He  talks  well,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac, 
sotto  voce,  to  the  Minister. 

"Yes,  especially  when  he  gets  hold  of 
large  words.  I  really  believe  he  reads/' 
replied  Mr.  Whitechoker. 


"  I  know  he  does,"  said  the  School-master, 
who  had  overheard.  "  I  saw  him  reading 
Webster's  Dictionary  last  night.  I  have 
noticed,  however,  that  generally  his  vocab- 
ulary is  largely  confined  to  words  that  come 
between  the  letters  A  and  F,  which  shows 
that  as  yet  he  has  not  dipped  very  deeply 
into  the  book." 

"What  are  you  murmuring  about  ?"queried 
the  Idiot,  noting  the  lowered  tone  of  those 
on  the  other  side  of  the  table. 

"We  were  conversing — ahem!  about — " 
began  the  Minister,  with  a  despairing  glance 
at  the  Bibliomaniac^ 

"  Let  me  say  it,"  interrupted  the  Biblio- 
maniac. "  You  aren't  used  to  prevarication, 
and  that  is  what  is  demanded  at  this  time. 
We  were  talking  about — ah — about— er— ' 

"  Tut !  tut !"  ejaculated  the  School-master. 
"  We  were  only  saying  we  thought  the — er 
—the— that  the—" 

"  What  are  the  first  symptoms  of  insanity, 
Doctor  ?"  observed  the  Idiot,  with  a  look  of 
wonder  at  the  three  shuffling  boarders  op- 
posite him,  and  turning  anxiously  to  the 
physician. 

"  I  wish  you  wouldn't  talk  shop,"  retorted 


the  Doctor,  angrily.  Insanity  was  one  of 
his  weak  points. 

"  It's  a  beastly  habit,"  said  the  School- 
master, much  relieved  at  this  turn  of  the 
conversation. 

"  Well,  perhaps  you  are  right,"  returned 
the  Idiot.  "  People  do,  as  a  rule,  prefer  to 
talk  of  things  they  know  something  about, 
and  I  don't  blame  you,  Doctor,  for  wanting 
to  keep  out  of  a  medical  discussion.  I  only 
asked  my  last  question  because  the  behavior 
of  the  Bibliomaniac  and  Mr.  Whitechoker 
and  the  School-master  for  some  time  past 
has  worried  me,  and  I  didn't  know  but  what 
you  might  work  up  a  nice  little  practice 
among  us.  It  might  not  pay,  but  you'd 
find  the  experience  valuable,  and  I  think 
unique." 

"  It  is  a  fine  thing  to  have  a  doctor  right 
in  the  house,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker,  kindly, 
fearing  that  the  Doctor's  manifest  indigna- 
tion might  get  the  better  of  him. 

"  That,"  returned  the  Idiot,  "  is  an  asser- 
tion, Mr.  Whitechoker,  that  is  both  true 
and  untrue.  There  are  times  when  a  physi- 
cian is  an  ornament  to  a  boarding-house  ; 
times  when  he  is  not.  For  instance,  on 


Wednesday  morning  if  it  had  not  been  for 
the  surgical  skill  of  our  friend  here,  our 
good  landlady  could  never  have  managed 
properly  to  distribute  the  late  autumn 
chicken  we  found  upon  the  menu.  Tally 
one  for  the  affirmative.  On  the  other  hand, 
I  must  confess  to  considerable  loss  of  appe- 
tite when  I  see  the  Doctor  rolling  his  bread 
up  into  little  pills,  or  measuring  the  vinegar 
he  puts  on  his  salad  by  means  of  a  glass 
dropper,  and  taking  the  temperature  of  his 
coffee  with  his  pocket  thermometer.  Nor 
do  I  like — and  I  should  not  have  mentioned 
it  save  by  way  of  illustrating  my  positiort  in 
regard  to  Mr.  Whitechoker's  assertion — 
nor  do  I  like  the  cold,  eager  glitter  in  the 
Doctor's  eyes  as  he  watches  me  consuming, 
with  some  difficulty,  I  admit,  the  cold  pastry 
we  have  served  up  to  us  on  Saturday  morn- 
ings under  the  wholly  transparent  alias  of 
'  Hot  Bread.'  I  may  have  very  bad  taste, 
but,  in  my  humble  opinion,  the  man  who 
talks  shop  Js  preferable  to  the  one  who  sug- 
gests it  in  his  eyes.  Some  more  iced  pota- 
toes, Mary,"  he  added,  calmly. 

"  Madame,"  said  the  Doctor,  turning  an- 
grily to  the  landlady,  "  this  is  insufferable. 


READING  WEBSTER'S  DICTIONARY  ' 


You  may  make  out  my  bill  this  morning.    I 
shall  have  to  seek  a  home  elsewhere." 

"  Oh,  now,  Doctor  !"  began  the  landlady, 
in  her  most  pleading  tone. 

"  Jove  !"  ejaculated  the  Idiot.  "  That's  a 
good  idea,  Doctor.  I  think  I'll  go  with  you  ; 
I'm  not  altogether  satisfied  here  myself,  but 
to  desert  so  charming  a  company  as  we  have 
here  had  never  occurred  to  me.  Together, 
however,  we  can  go  forth,  and  perhaps  find 
happiness.  Shall  we  put  on  our  hunting 
togs  and  chase  the  fiery,  untamed  hall-room 
to  the  death  this  morning,  or  shall  we  put 
it  off  until  some  pleasanter  day  ?" 

"  Put  it  off,'*  observed  the  School- master, 
persuasively.  "  The  Idiot  was  only  indulg- 
ing in  persiflage,  Doctor.  That's  all.  When 
you  have  known  him  longer  you  will  under- 
stand him  better.  Views  are  as  necessary 
to  him  as  sunlight  to  the  flowers ;  and  I 
truly  think  that  in  an  asylum  he  would 
prove  a  delightful  companion." 

"There,  Doctor,"  said  the  Idiot;  "that's 

handsome  of  the  Scho61-master.  He  couldn't 

make  more  of  an  apology  if  he  tried.     I'll 

forgive  him  if  you  will.     What  say  you  ?" 

And  strange  to  say,  the  Doctor,  in  spite 


of  the  indignation  which  still  left  a  red  tinge 
on  his  cheek,  laughed  aloud  and  was  recon- 
ciled. 

As  for  the  School-master,  he  wanted  to 
be  angry,  but  he  did  not  feel  that  he  could 
afford  his  wrath,  and  for  the  first  time  in 
some  months  the  guests  went  their  several 
ways  at  peace  with  each  other  and  the 
world. 


Ill 

THERE  was  a  conspiracy  in  hand  to  em- 
barrass the  Idiot.  The  School-master  and 
the  Bibliomaniac  had  combined  forces  to 
give  him  a  taste  of  his  own  medicine.  The 
time  had  not  yet  arrived  which  showed  the 
Idiot  at  a  disadvantage  ;  and  the  two  board- 
ers, the  one  proud  of  his  learning,  and  the 
other  not  wholly  unconscious  of  a  bookish 
life,  were  distinctly  tired  of  the  triumphant 
manner  in  which  the  Idiot  always  left  the 
breakfast-table  to  their  invariable  discom- 
fiture. 

It  was  the  School-master's  suggestion  to 
put  their  tormentor  into  the  pit  he  had  here- 
tofore digged  for  them.  The  worthy  in- 
structor of  youth  had  of  late  come  to  see 
that  while  he  was  still  a  prime  favorite  with 
his  landlady,  he  had,  nevertheless,  suffered 
somewhat  in  her  estimation  because  of  the 
apparent  ease  with  which  the  Idiot  had  got 
the  better  of  him  on  all  points.  It  was  nee- 


essary,  he  thought,  to  rehabilitate  himself, 
and  a  deep-laid  plot,  to  which  the  Biblio- 
maniac readily  lent  ear,  was  the  result  of 
his  reflections.  They  twain  were  to  indulge 
in  a  discussion  of  the  great  story  of  Robert 
Elsmere,  which  both  were  confident  the 
Idiot  had  not  read,  and  concerning  which 
they  felt  assured  he  could  not  have  an  in- 
telligent opinion  if  he  had  read  it. 

So  it  happened  upon  this  bright  Sunday 
morning  that  as  the  boarders  sat  them  down 
to  partake  of  the  usual  "  restful  breakfast," 
as  the  Idiot  termed  it,  the  Bibliomaniac  ob- 
served : 

"  I  have  just  finished  reading  Robert  Els- 
mere." 

"  Have  you,  indeed  ?"  returned  the  School- 
master, with  apparent  interest.  "  I  trust 
you  profited  by  it  ?" 

"  On  the  contrary,"  observed  the  Biblio- 
maniac. "  My  views  are  much  unsettled 
by  it." 

"  I  prefer  the  breast  of  the  chicken,  Mrs. 
Smithers,"  observed  the  Idiot,  sending  his 
plate  back  to  the  presiding  genius  of  the 
table.  "  The  neck  of  a  chicken  is  graceful, 
but  not  too  full  of  sustenance." 


"  He  fights  shy,"  whispered  the  Biblio- 
maniac, gleefully. 

"  Never  mind,"  returned  the  School-mas- 
ter, confidently ;  "  we'll  land  him  yet."  Then 
he  added,  aloud:  "Unsettled  by  it?  I 
fail  to  see  how  any  man  with  beliefs  that 
are  at  all  the  result  of  mature  convictions 
can  be  unsettled  by  the  story  of  Elsmere. 
For  my  part  I  believe,  and  I  have  always 
said — ' 

"  I  never  could  understand  why  the  neck 
of  a  chicken  should  be  allowed  on  a  respec- 
table table  anyhow,"  continued  the  Idiot, 
ignoring  the  controversy  in  which  his  neigh- 
bors were  engaged,  "unless  for  the  pur- 
pose of  showing  that  the  deceased  fowl  met 
with  an  accidental  rather  than  a  natural 
death." 

"  In  what  way  does  the  neck  demonstrate 
that  point  ?"  queried  the  Bibliomaniac,  for- 
getting the  conspiracy  for  a  moment. 

"  By  its  twist  or  by  its  length,  of  course," 
returned  the  Idiot.  "  A  chicken  that  dies  a 
natural  death  does  not  have  its  neck  wrung ; 
nor  when  the  head  is  removed  by  the  use 
of  a  hatchet,  is  it  likely  that  it  will  be  cut 
off  so  close  behind  the  ears  that  those  who 


I   STUCK    TO  THE   PIGS7" 


eat  the  chicken  are  confronted  with  four 
inches  of  neck." 

"  Very  entertaining  indeed,"  interposed 
the  School-master;  "  but  we  are  wandering 
from  the  point  the  Bibliomaniac  and  I  were 
discussing.  Is  or  is  not  the  story  of  Robert 
Elsmere  unsettling  to  one's  beliefs  ?  Per- 
haps you  can  help  us  to  decide  that  ques- 
tion." 

"  Perhaps  I  can,"  returned  the  Idiot; 
"  and  perhaps  not.  It  did  not  unsettle  my 
beliefs." 

"  But  don't  you  think,"  observed  the  Bib- 
liomaniac, "that  to  certain  minds  the  book 
is  more  or  less  unsettling?" 

"  To  that  I  can  confidently  say  no.  The 
certain  mind  knows  no  uncertainty,"  replied 
the  Idiot,  calmly. 

"Very  pretty  indeed,"  said  the  School- 
master, coldly.  "  But  what  was  your  opin- 
ion of  Mrs.  Ward's  handling  of  the  subject? 
Do  you  think  she  was  sufficiently  realistic  ? 
And  if  so,  and  Elsmere  weakened  under  the 
stress  of  circumstances,  do  you  think — or 
don't  you  think — the  production  of  such  a 
book  harmful,  because — being  real — it  must 
of  necessity  be  unsettling  to  some  minds  ?" 


"  I  prefer  not  to  express  an  opinion  on 
that  subject,"  returned  the  Idiot,  "because 
I  never  read  Robert  Els — " 

"  Never  read  it  ?"  ejaculated  the  School- 
master, a  look  of  triumph  in  his  eyes. 

"  Why,  everybody  has  read  Elsmere  that 
pretends  to  have  read  anything,"  asserted 
the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  Of  course,"  put  in  the  landlady,  with  a 
scornful  laugh. 

"Well,  I  didn't,"  said  the  Idiot,  non- 
chalantly. "  The  same  ground  was  gone 
over  two  years  before  in  Burrows's  great 
story,  Is  It,  or  Is  It  Not?  and  anybody  who 
ever  read  Clink's  books  on  the  Non-Existent 
as  Opposed  to  What  Is,  knows  where  Bur- 
i  ows  got  his  points.  Burrows's  story  was  a 
perfect  marvel.  I  don't  know  how  many 
editions  it  went  through  in  England,  and 
when  it  was  translated  into  French  by 
Madame  Tournay,  it  simply  set  the  French 
wild." 

"  Great  Scott !"  whispered  the  Biblioma- 
niac, desperately,  "  I'm  afraid  we've  been 
barking  up  the  wrong  tree." 

"You've  read  Clink,  I  suppose?"  asked 
the  Idiot,  turning  to  the  School-master. 


"Y— yes,"  returned  the  School  -  master, 
blushing  deeply. 

The  Idiot  looked  surprised,  and  tried  to 
conceal  a  smile  by  sipping  his  coffee  from  a 
spoon. 

"  And  Burrows  ?" 

"  No,"  returned  the  School-master,  hum- 
bly. "  I  never  read  Burrows." 

"  Well,  you  ought  to.  It's  a  great  book, 
and  it's  the  one  Robert  Elsmere  is  taken  from 
— same  ideas  all  through,  I'm  told — that's 
why  I  didn't  read  Elsmere.  Waste  of  time, 
you  know.  But  you  noticed  yourself,  I  sup- 
•  pose,  that  Clink's  ground  is  the  same  as  that 
covered  in  Elsmere?" 

"  No ;  I  only  dipped  lightly  into  Clink," 
returned  the  School-master,  with  some  em- 
barrassment. 

"But  you  couldn't  help  noticing  a  sim- 
ilarity of  ideas  ?"  insisted  the  Idiot, 
calmly. 

The  School-master  looked  beseechingly 
at  the  Bibliomaniac,  who  would  have  been 
glad  to  fly  to  his  co-conspirator's  assistance 
had  he  known  how,  but  never  having  heard 
of  Clink,  or  Burrows  either,  for.that  matter, 
he  made  up  his  mind  that  it  was  best  for  his 


reputation  for  him  to  stay  out  of  the  con- 
troversy. 

"Very  slight  similarity,  however,"  said 
the  School-master,  in  despair. 

"  Where  can  I  find  Clink's  books  ?"  put  in 
Mr.  Whitechoker,  very  much  interested. 

The  Idiot  conveniently  had  his  mouth 
full  of  chicken  at  the  moment,  and  it  was 
to  the  School  -  master  who  had  also  read 
him  that  they  all — the  landlady  included — 
looked  for  an  answer. 

"  Oh,  I  think,"  returned  that  worthy,  hes- 
itatingly— "  I  think  you'll  find  Clink  in  any 
of  the  public  libraries."  , 

"  What  is  his  full  name  ?"  persisted  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  taking  out  a  memorandum- 
book. 

"  Horace  J.  Clink,"  said  the  Idiot. 

"  Yes ;  that's  it— Horace  J.  Clink,"  echoed 
the  School-master.  "  Very  virile  writer  and 
a  clear  thinker,"  he  added,  with  some  nerv- 
ousness. 

"  What,  if  any,  of  his  books  would  you 
specially  recommend?"  asked  the  Minister 
again. 

The  Idiot  had  by  this  time  risen  from 
the  table,  and  was  leaving  the  room  with 


the  genial  gentleman  who  occasionally  im- 
bibed. 

The  School-master's  reply  was  not  audi- 
ble. 

"  I  say,"  said  the  genial  gentleman  to  the 
Idiot,  as  they  passed  out  into  the  hall,  "  they 
didn't  get  much  the  best  of  you  in  that  mat- 
ter. But,  tell  me,  who  was  Clink,  anyhow  ?" 

"  Never  heard  of  him  before,"  returned 
the  Idiot. 

"And  Burrows?" 

"  Same  as  Clink." 

"  Know  anything  about  Elsmere  ?"  chuc- 
kled the  genial  gentleman. 

"Nothing — except  that  it  and  'Pigs  in 
Clover '  came  out  at  the  same  time,  and  I 
stuck  to  the  Pigs." 

And  the  genial  gentleman  who  occasion- 
ally imbibed  was  so  pleased  at  the  plight  of 
the  School-master  and  of  the  Bibliomaniac 
that  he  invited  the  Idiot  up  to  his  room, 
where  the  private  stock  was  kept  for  just 
such  occasions,  and  they  put  in  a  very  pleas- 
ant morning  together. 


IV 

THE  guests  were  assembled  as  usual.  The 
oatmeal  course  had  been  eaten  in  silence. 
In  the  Idiot's  eye  there  was  a  cold  glitter  of 
expectancy — a  glitter  that  boded  ill  for  the 
man  who  should  challenge  him  to  contro- 
versial combat — and  there  seemed  also  to 
be,  judging  from  sundry  winks  passed  over 
the  table  and  kicks  passed  under  it,  an  un- 
derstanding to  which  he  and  the  genial 
gentleman  who  occasionally  imbibed  were 
parties. 

As  the  School-master  sampled  his  coffee 
the  genial  gentleman  who  occasionally  im- 
bibed broke  the  silence. 

"  I  missed  you  at  the  concert  last  night, 
Mr.  Idiot,"  said  he. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Idiot,  with  a  caressing 
movement  of  the  hand  over  his  upper  lip; 
"  I  was  very  sorry,  but  I  couldn't  get  around 
last  night.  I  had  an  engagement  with  a 
number  of  friends  at  the  athletic  club.  I 


meant  to  have  dropped  you  a  line  in  the  af- 
ternoon telling  you  about  it,  but  I  forgot  it 
until  it  was  too  late.  Was  the  concert  a 
success  ?" 

"  Very  successful  indeed.  The  best  one, 
in  fact,  we  have  had  this  season,  which 
makes  me  regret  all  the  more  deeply  your 
absence,"  returned  the  genial  gentleman, 
with  a  suggestion  of  a  smile  playing  about 
his  lips.  "Indeed,"  he  added,  "  it  was  the 
finest  one  I've  ever  seen." 

"  The  finest  one  you've  what  ?"  que- 
ried the  School  -  master,  startled  at  the 
verb. 

"  The  finest  one  I've  ever  seen,"  replied 
the  genial  gentleman.  "  There  were  only 
ten  performers,  and  really,  in  all  my  experi- 
ence as  an  attendant  at  concerts,  I  never 
saw  such  a  magnificent  rendering  of  Beet- 
hoven as  we  had  last  night.  I  wish  you 
could  have  been  there.  It  was  a  sight  for 
the  gods." 

"  I  don't  believe,"  said  the  Idiot,  with  a 
slight  cough  that,  may  have  been  intended 
to  conceal  a  laugh — and  that  may  also  have 
been  the  result  of  too  many  cigarettes — "  I 
don't  believe  it  could  have  been  any  more 


interesting  than  a  game  of  pool  I  heard  at 
the  club." 

"  It  appears  to  me,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac 
to  the  School- master,  "that  the  popping 
sounds  we  heard  late  last  night  in  the  Id- 
iot's room  may  have  some  connection  with 
the  present  mode  of  speech  these  two  gen- 
tlemen affect." 

"  Let's  hear  them  out,"  returned  the 
School-master,  "  and  then  we'll  take  them 
into  camp,  as  the  Idiot  would  say." 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  replied  the 
genial  gentleman.  "I've  seen  a  great  many 
concerts,  and  I've  heard  a  great  many  good 
games  of  pool,  but  the  concert  last  night 
was  simply  a  ravishing  spectacle.  We  had  a 
Cuban  pianist  there  who  played  the  orches- 
tration of  the  first  act  of  Parsifal  with  sur- 
prising agility.  As  far  as  I  could  see,  he 
didn't  miss  a  note,  though  it  was  a  little  an- 
noying to  observe  how  he  used  the  pedals." 

"  Too  forcibly,  or  how?"  queried  the  Idiot. 

"  Not  forcibly  enough,"  returned  the  Im- 
biber. "  He  tried  to  work  them  both  with 
one  foot.  It  was  the  only  thing  to  mar  an 
otherwise  marvellous  performance.  The 
idea  of  a  man  trying  to  display  Wagner 


'WEREN'T  YOUR  EARS  LONG  ENOUGH?"* 


with  two  hands  and  one  foot  is  irritating 
to  a  musician  with  a  trained  eye." 

"  I  wish  the  Doctor  would  come  down," 
said  Mrs.  Smithers,  anxiously. 

"  Yes,"  put  in  the  School-master;  "there 
seems  to  be  madness  in  our  midst.". 

"  Well,  what  can  you  expect  of  a  Cuban, 
anyhow  ?"  queried  the  Idiot.  "  The  Cuban, 
like  the  Spaniard  or  the  Italian  or  the  Afri- 
can, hasn't  the  vigor  which  is  necessary  for 
the  proper  comprehension  and  rendering  of 
Wagner's  music.  He  is  by  nature  slow  and 
indolent.  If  it  were  easier  for  a  Spaniard 
to  hop  than  to  walk,  he'd  hop,  and  rest  his 
other  leg.  I've  known  Italians  whose  diet 
was  entirely  confined  to  liquids,  because 
they  were  too  tired  to  masticate  solids.  It 
is  the  ease  with  which  it  can  be  absorbed 
that  makes  macaroni  the  favorite  dish  of 
the  Italians,  and  the  fondness  of  all  Latin 
races  for  wines  is  entirely  due,  I  think,  to 
the  fact  that  wine  can  be  swallowed  with- 
out chewing.  This  indolence  affects  also 
their  language.  The  Italian  and  the  Span- 
iard speak  the  language  that  comes  easy — 
that  is  soft  and  dreamy ;  while  the  Germans 
and  Russians,  stronger,  more  energetic,  in- 


dulge  in  a  speech  that  even  to  us,  who  are 
people  of  an  average  amount  of  energy,  is 
sometimes  appalling  in  the  severity  of  the 
strain  it  puts  upon  the  tongue.  So,  while 
I  do  not  wonder  that  your  Cuban  pianist 
showed  woful  defects  in  his  use  of  the  ped- 
als, I  do  wonder  that,  even  with  his  sur- 
prising agility,  he  had  sufficient  energy  to 
manipulate  the  keys  to  the  satisfaction  of 
so  competent  a  witness  as  yourself." 

"  It  was  too  bad  ;  but  we  made  up  for  it 
later,"  asserted  the  other.  "  There  was  a 
young  girl  there  who  gave  us  some  of  Men- 
delssohn's Songs  without  Words.  Her  ex- 
pression was  simply  perfect.  I  wouldn't  have 
missed  it  for  all  the  world  ;  and  now  that  I 
think  of  it,  in  a  few  days  I  can  let  you  see 
for  yourself  how  splendid  it  was.  We  per- 
suaded her  to  encore  the  songs  in  the  dark, 
and  we  got  a  flash-light  photograph  of  two 
of  them." 

"  Oh  !  then  it  was  not  on  the  piano-forte 
she  gave  them  ?"  said  the  Idiot. 

"  Oh  no ;  all  labial,"  returned  the  genial 
gentleman. 

Here  Mr.  Whitechoker  began  to  look  con- 
cerned, and  whispered  something  to  the 


School-master,  who  replied  that  there  were 
enough  others  present  to  cope  with  the  two 
parties  to  the  conversation  in  case  of  a  vio- 
lent outbreak. 

"  I'd  be  very  glad  to  see  the  photographs," 
replied  the  Idiot.  "Can't  I  secure  copies  of 
them  for  my  collection  ?  You  know  I  have 
the  complete  rendering  of  '  Home,  Sweet 
Home  '  in  kodak  views,  as  sung  by  Patti. 
They  are  simply  wonderful,  and  they  prove 
what  has  repeatedly  been  said  by  critics, 
that,  in  the  matter  of  expression,  the  supe- 
rior of  Patti  has  never  been  seen." 

"I'll  try  to  get  them  for  you,  though  I 
doubt  it  can  be  done.  The  artist  is  a  very 
shy  young  girl,  and  does  not  care  to  have 
her  efforts  given  too  great  a  publicity  until 
she  is  ready  to  go  into  music  a  little  more 
deeply.  She  is  going  to  read  the  'Moon- 
light Sonata '  to  us  at  our  next  concert. 
You'd  better  come.  I'm  told  her  gestures 
bring  out  the  composer's  meaning  in  a  man- 
ner never  as  yet  equalled." 

"  I'll  be  there;  thank  you/'  returned  the 
Idiot.  '•"  And  the  next  time  those  fellows 
at  the  club  are  down  for  a  pool  tournament 
I  want  you  to  come  up  and  hear  them  play. 


387723 


It  was  extraordinary  last  night  to  hear  the 
balls  dropping  one  by  one  —  click,  click, 
click — as  regularly  as  a  metronome,  into 
the  pockets.  One  of  the  finest  shots,  I  am 
sorry  to  say,  I  missed." 

"  How  did  it  happen  ?"  asked  the  Biblio- 
maniac. "  Weren't  your  ears  long  enough?' 

"  It  was  a  kiss  shot,  and  I  couldn't  hear 
it,"  returned  the  Idiot. 

"  I  think  you  men  are  crazy,"  said  the 
School-master,  unable  to  contain  himself 
any  longer. 

"  So  ?"  observed  the  Idiot,  calmly.  "And 
how  do  we  show  our  insanity  ?" 

"  Seeing  concerts  and  hearing  games  of 
pool." 

•  I  take  exception  to  your  ruling,"  re- 
turned the  Imbiber.  "As  my  friend  the  Id- 
iot has  frequently  remarked,  you  have  the 
peculiarity  of  a  great  many  men  in  your 
profession,  who  think  because  they  never 
happened  to  see  or  do  or  hear  things  as 
other  people  do,  they  may  not  be  seen, 
done,  or  heard  at  all.  I  saw  the  concert  I 
attended  last  night.  Our  musical  club  has 
rooms  next  to  a  hospital,  and  we  have  to 
give  silent  concerts  for  fear  of  disturbing 


the  patients;  but  we  are  all  musicians  of 
sufficient  education  to  understand  by  a 
glance  of  the  eye  what  you  would  fail  to 
comprehend  with  fourteen  ears  and  a  mi- 
crophone." 

"  Very  well  said,"  put  in  the  Idiot,  with  a 
scornful  glance  at  the  School-master.  "  And 
I  literally  heard  the  pool  tournament.  I  was 
dining  in  a  room  off  the  billiard-hall,  and 
every  shot  that  was  made,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  one  I  spoke  of,  was  distinctly 
audible.  You  gentlemen,  who  think  you 
know  it  all,  wouldn't  be  able  to  supply  a 
bureau  of  information  at  the  rate  of  five 
minutes  a  day  for  an  hour  on  a  holiday. 
Let's  go  up-stairs,"  he  added,  turning  to 
the  Imbiber,  "where  we  may  discuss  our 
last  night's  entertainment  apart  from  this 
atmosphere  of  rarefied  learning.  It  makes 
me  faint." 

And  the  Imbiber,  who  was  with  difficulty 
keeping  his  lips  in  proper  form,  was  glad 
enough  to  accept  the  invitation.  "  The  corks 
popped  to  some  purpose  last  night,"  he  said, 
later  on. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Idiot ;  "  for  a  conspiracy 
there's  nothing  so  helpful  as  popping  corks." 


"  WHEN  you  get  through  with  *he  fire, 
Mr.  Pedagog,"  observed  the  Idiot,  one  win- 
ter's morning,  noticing  that  the  ample  pro- 
portions of  the  School-master  served  as  a 
screen  to  shut  off  the  heat  from  himself 
and  the  genial  gentleman  who  occasionally 
imbibed,  "  I  wish  you  would  let  us  have  a 
little  of  it.  Indeed,  if  you  could  conven- 
iently spare  so  little  as  one  flame  for  my 
friend  here  and  myself,  we'd  be  much 
obliged." 

"  It  won't  hurt  you  to  cool  off  a  little, 
sir,"  returned  the  School-master,  without 
moving. 

"  No,  I  am  not  so  much  afraid  of  the  in- 
jury that  may  be  mine  as  I  am  concerned 
for  you.  If  that  fire  should  melt  our  only 
refrigerating  material,  I  do  not  know  what 
our  good  landlady  would  do.  Is  it  true,  as 
the  Bibliomaniac  asserts,  that  Mrs.  Smithers 
leaves  all  her  milk  and  butter  in  your  room 


overnight,  relying  upon  your  coolness  to 
keep  them  fresh  ?" 

"  I  never  made  any  such  assertion,"  said 
the  Bibliomaniac,  warmly. 

"  I  am  not  used  to  having  my  word  dis- 
puted," returned  the  Idiot,  with  a  wink  at 
the  genial  old  gentleman. 

"  But  I  never  said  it,  and  I  defy  you  to 
prove  that  I  said  it,"  returned  the  Biblio- 
maniac, hotly. 

"  You  forget,  sir,"  said  the  Idiot,  coolly, 
"  that  you  are  the  one  who  disputes  my  as- 
sertion. That  casts  the  burden  of  proof  on 
your  shoulders.  Of  course  if  you  can  prove 
that  you  never  said  anything  of  the  sort, 
I  withdraw;  but  if  you  cannot  adduce 
proofs,  you,  having  doubted  my  word,  and 
publicly  at  that,  need  not  feel  hurt  if  I 
decline  to  accept  all  that  you  say  as  gos- 
pel." 

"  You  show  ridiculous  heat,"  said  the 
School-master. 

"  Thank  you,"  returned  the  Idiot,  grace- 
fully. "And  that  brings  us  back  to  the 
original  proposition  that  you  would  do  well 
to  show  a  little  yourself." 

"  Good-morning,  gentlemen,"  said    Mrs. 


Smithers,  entering  the  room  at  this  mo- 
ment. "  It's  a  bright,  fresh  morning." 

"  Like  yourself,"  said  the  School-master, 
gallantly. 

"  Yes,"  added  the  Idiot,  with  a  glance  at 
the  clock,  which  registered  8.45 — forty-five 
minutes  after  the  breakfast  hour — "very 
like  Mrs.  Smithers — rather  advanced." 

To  this  the  landlady  paid  no  attention ; 
but  the  School-master  could  not  refrain 
from  saying, 

"Advanced,  and  therefore  not  backward, 
like  some  persons  I  might  name." 

"  Very  clever,"  retorted  the  Idiot,  "  and 
really  worth  rewarding.  Mrs.  Smithers, 
you  ought  to  give  Mr.  Pedagog  a  receipt 
in  full  for  the  past  six  months." 

"  Mr.  Pedagog,"  returned  the  landlady, 
severely,  "  is  one  of  the  gentlemen  who  al- 
ways have  their  receipts  for  the  past  six 
months." 

"Which  betrays  a  very  saving  disposition," 
accorded  the  Idiot.  "  I  wish  I  had  all  I'd 
received  for  six  months.  I'd  be  a  rich 
man." 

"  Would  you,  now  ?"  queried  the  Biblio- 
maniac. "  That  is  interesting  enough.  How 


men's  ideas  differ  on  the  subject  of  wealth! 
Here  is  the  Idiot  would  consider  himself 
rich  with  $150  in  his  pocket — ' 

"  Do  you  think  he  gets  as  much  as  that  ?" 
put  in  the  School-master,  viciously.  "  Five 
dollars  a  week  is  rather  high  pay  for  one  of 
his — " 

"Very  high  indeed,"  agreed  the  Idiot. 
"  I  wish  I  got  that  much.  I  might  be  able 
,to  hire  a  two-legged  encyclopaedia  to  tell 
me  everything,  and  have  over  $4.75  a  week 
left  to  spend  on  opera,  dress,  and  the  poor 
but  honest  board  Mrs.  Smithers  provides, 
if  my  salary  was  up  to  the  $5  mark  ;  but 
the  trouble  is  men  do  not  make  the  fabu- 
lous fortunes  nowadays  with  the  ease  with 
which  you,  Mr.  Pedagog,  made  yours.  There 
are,  no  doubt,  more  and  greater  opportuni- 
ties to-day  than  there  were  in  the  olden 
time,  but  there  are  also  more  men  trying 
to  take  advantage  of  them.  Labor  in  the 
business  world  is  badly  watered.  The  col- 
leges are  turning  out  more  men  in  a  week 
nowadays  than  the  whole  country  turned 
out  in  a  year  forty  years  ago,  and  the  qual- 
ity is  so  poor  that  there  has  been  a  genera) 
reduction  of  wages  all  along  the  line.  Where 


does  the  struggler  for  existence  come  in 
when  he  has  to  compete  with  the  college- 
bred  youth  who,  for  fear  of  not  getting  em- 
ployment anywhere,  is  willing  to  work  for 
nothing?  People  are  not  willing  to  pay  for 
what  they  can  get  for  nothing." 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  from  your  lips  so  com- 
plete an  admission,"  said  the  School-master, 
"  that  education  is  downing  ignorance." 

"  I  am  glad  to  know  of  your  gladness," 
returned  the  Idiot.  "  I  didn't  quite  say  that 
education  was  downing  ignorance.  I  plead 
guilty  to  the  charge  of  holding  the  belief 
that  unskilled  omniscience  interferes  very 
materially  with  skilled  sciolism  in  skilled 
sciolism's  efforts  to  make  a  living." 

"  Then  you  admit  your  own  superfici- 
ality?" asked  the  School-master,  somewhat 
surprised  by  the  Idiot's  command  of  sylla- 
bles. 

"  I  admit  that  I  do  not  know  it  all,"  re- 
turned the  Idiot.  "  I  prefer  to  go  through 
life  feeling  that  there  is  yet  something  for 
me  to  learn.  It  seems  to  me  far  better  to 
admit  this  voluntarily  than  to  have  it  forced 
home  upon  me  by  circumstances,  as  hap- 
pened in  the  case  of  a  college  graduate  I 


know,  who  speculated  on  Wall  Street,  and 
lost  the  hundred  dollars  that  were  subse- 
quently put  to  a  good  use  by  the  unedu- 
cated me." 

"  From  which  you  deduce  that  ignorance 
is  better  than  education  ?"  queried  the 
School-master,  scornfully. 

"  For  an  omniscient,"  returned  the  Idiot, 
"you  are  singularly  near-sighted.  I  have 
made  no  such  deduction.  I  arrive  at  the 
conclusion,  however,  that  in  the  chase  for 
the  gilded  shekel  the  education  of  experi- 
ence is  better  than  the  coddling  of  Alma 
Mater.  In  the  satisfaction — the  personal 
satisfaction — one  derives  from  a  liberal  ed- 
ucation, I  admit  that  the  sons  of  Alma  Ma- 
ter are  the  better  off.  I  never  could  hope 
to  be  so  self-satisfied,  for  instance,  as  you 
are." 

" No,"  observed  the  School-master,  "you 
cannot  raise  grapes  on  a  thistle  farm.  Any 
unbiassed  observer  looking  around  this  ta- 
ble," he  added,  "and  noting  Mr.  White- 
choker,  a  graduate  of  Yale ,  the  Biblio- 
maniac, a  son  of  dear  old  Harvard ;  the 
Doctor,  an  honor  man  of  Williams ;  our 
legal  friend  here,  a  graduate  of  Columbia 


THE  SCHOOLMASTER   AS   A  COOLER 


— to  say  nothing  of  myself,  who  was  grad- 
uated with  honors  at  Amherst — any  un- 
biassed observer  seeing  these,  I  say,  and 
then  seeing  you,  wouldn't  take  very  long 
to  make  up  his  mind  as  to  whether  a  man 
is  better  off  or  not  for  having  had  a  colle- 
giate training." 

"  There  I  must  again  dispute  your  asser- 
tion," returned  the  Idiot.  "  The  unbiassed 
person  of  whom  you  speak  would  say, '  Here 
is  this  gray-haired  Amherst  man,  this  book- 
loving  Cambridge  boy  of  fifty-seven  years 
of  age,  the  reverend  graduate  of  Yale,  class 
of  '55,  and  the  other  two  learned  gentlemen 
of  forty-nine  summers  each,  and  this  poor 
ignoramus  of  an  Idiot,  whose  only  virtue  is 
his  modesty,  all  in  the  same  box.'  And  then 
he  would  ask  himself,  '  In  what  way  have 
these  sons  of  Amherst,  Yale,  Harvard,  and 
so  forth,  the  better  of  the  unassuming 
Idiot  ?' " 

"The  same  box?"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 
'  What  do  you  mean  by  that?" 

"  Just  what  I  say,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"  The  same  box.  All  boarding,  all  eschew- 
ing luxuries  of  necessity,  all  paying  their 
bills  with  difficulty,  all  sparsely  clothed  ;  in 


reality,  all  keeping  Lent  the  year  through. 
'  Verily,'  he  would  say,  '  the  Idiot  has  the 
best  of  it,  for  he  is  young.' " 

And  leaving  them  chewing  the  cud  of  re- 
flection, the  Idiot  departed. 

"  I  thought  they  were  going  to  land  you 
that  time,"  said  the  genial  gentleman  who 
occasionally  imbibed,  later;  "but  when  I 
heard  you  use  the  word  '  sciolism,'  I  knew 
you  were  all  right.  Where  did  you  get  it?" 

"  My  chief  got  it  off  on  me  at  the  office 
the  other  day.  I  happened  in  a  mad  mo- 
ment to  try  to  unload  some  of  my  original 
observations  on  him  apropos  of  my  getting 
to  the  office  two  hours  late,  in  which  it  was 
my  endeavor  to  prove  to  him  that  the  truly 
safe  and  conservative  man  was  always  slow, 
and  so  apt  to  turn  up  late  on  occasions. 
He  hopped  about  the  office  for  a  minute 
or  two,  and  then  he  informed  me  that  I 
was  an  i8-karat  sciolist.  I  didn't  know 
what  he  meant,  and  so  I  looked  it  up." 

"  And  what  did  he  mean  ?" 

"  He  meant  that  I  took  the  cake  for 
superficiality,  and  I  guess  he  was  right," 
replied  the  Idiot,  with  a  smile  that  was  not 
altogether  mirthful. 


VI 

" GOOD-MORNING!"  said  the  Idiot,  cheer- 
fully, as  he  entered  the  dining-room. 

To  this  remark  no  one  but  the  landlady 
vouchsafed  a  reply.  "  I  don't  think  it  is," 
she  said,  shortly.  "  It's  raining  too  hard  to 
be  a  very  good  morning." 

"That  reminds  me,"  observed  the  Idiot, 
taking  his  seat  and  helping  himself  copious- 
ly to  the  hominy.  "A  friend  of  mine  on 
one  of  the  newspapers  is  preparing  an  ar- 
ticle on  the  '  Antiquity  of  Modern  Humor.' 
With  your  kind  permission,  Mrs.  Smithers, 
I'll  take  down  your  remark  and  hand  it 
over  to  Mr.  Scribuler  as  a  specimen  of  the 
modern  antique  joke.  You  may  not  be 
aware  of  the  fact,  but  that  jest  is  to  be  found 
in  the  rare  first  edition  of  the  Tales  of  Bob* 
bo,  an  Italian  humorist,  who  stole  every* 
thing  he  wrote  from  the  Greeks." 

"  So  ?"  queried  the  Bibliomaniac.  "  I  nevei 
heard  of  Bobbo,  though  I  had,  before  the 


"'READING  THE  SUNDAY  NEWSPAPERS' 


auction  sale  of  my  library,  a  choice  copy  of 
the  Tales  of  Poggio,  bound  in  full  crushed 
Levant  morocco,  with  gilt  edges ,  and  one 
or  two  other  Italian  Joe  Millers  in  tree  calf. 
I  cannot  at  this  moment  recall  their  names." 

"  At  what  period  did  Bobbo  live  ?  '  in- 
quired the  School-master. 

"  I  don't  exactly  remember,"  returned 
the  Idiot,  assisting  the  last  potato  on  the 
table  over  to  his  plate.  "  I  don't  know  ex- 
actly. It  was  subsequent  to  B.C.,  I  think, 
although  I  may  be  wrong.  If  it  was  not, 
you  may  rest  assured  it  was  prior  to  B.C." 

"  Do  you  happen  to  know,"  queried  the 
Bibliomaniac,  "  the  exact  date  of  this  rare 
first  edition  of  which  you  speak  ?" 

"  No ;  no  one  knows  that,"  returned  the 
Idiot.  "And  for  a  very  good  reason.  It 
was  printed  before  dates  were  invented." 

The  silence  which  followed  this  bit  of  in- 
formation from  the  Idiot  was  almost  insult- 
ing in  its  intensity.  It  was  a  silence  that 
spoke,  and  what  it  said  was  that  the  Idiot's 
idiocy  was  colossal,  and  he,  accepting  the 
stillness  as  a  tribute,  smiled  sweetly. 

"  What  do  you  think,  Mr.  Whitechoker," 
he  said,  when  he  thought  the  time  was  ripe 


for  renewing  the  conversation — "what  do 
you  think  of  the  doctrine  that  every  day 
will  be  Sunday  by-and-by?" 

"  I  have  only  to  say,  sir,"  returned  the 
Dominie,  pouring  a  little  hot  water  into  his 
milk,  which  was  a  bit  too  strong  for  him, 
"  that  I  am  a  firm  believer  in  the  occurrence 
of  a  period  when  Sunday  will  be  to  all  prac- 
tical purposes  perpetual." 

"  That  is  my  belief,  too,"  observed  the 
School-master.  "  But  it  will  be  ruinous  to 
our  good  landlady  to  provide  us  with  one 
of  her  exceptionally  fine  Sunday  breakfasts 
every  morning." 

"  Thank  you,  Mr.  Pedagog,"  returned 
Mrs.  Smithers,  with  a  smile.  "  Can't  I  give 
you  another  cup  of  coffee  ?" 

"  You  may,"  returned  the  School-master, 
pained  at  the  lady's  grammar,  but  too  cour- 
teous to  call  attention  to  it  save  by  the  em- 
phasis with  which  he  spoke  the  word  "  may." 

"  That's  one  view  to  take  of  it,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  But  in  case  we  got  a  Sunday 
breakfast  every  day  in  the  week,  we,  on  the 
other  hand,  would  get  approximately  what 
we  pay  for.  You  may  fill  my  cup  too,  Mrs. 
Smithers." 


"The  coffee  is  all  gone,"  returned  the 
landlady,  with  a  snap. 

"Then,  Mary,"  said  the  Idiot,  gracefully, 
turning  to  the  maid,  "you  may.give  me  a 
glass  of  ice -water.  It  is  quite  as  warm, 
after  all,  as  the  coffee,  and  not  quite  so 
weak.  A  perpetual  Sunday,  though,  would 
have  its  drawbacks,"  he  added,  unconscious 
of  the  venomous  glances  of  the  landlady. 
"  You,  Mr.  Whitechoker,  for  instance,  would 
be  preaching  all  the  time,  and  in  consequence 
would  soon  break  down.  Then  the  effect 
upon  our  eyes  from  habitually  reading  the 
Sunday  newspapers  day  after  day  would  be 
extremely  bad  ;  nor  must  we  forget  that  an 
eternity  of  Sundays  means  the  elimination 
'  from  our  midst,'  as  the  novelists  say,  of 
baseball,  of  circuses,  of  horse-racing,  and 
other  necessities  of  life,  unless  we  are  pre- 
pared to  cast  over  the  Puritanical  view  of 
Sunday  which  now  prevails.  It  would  sub- 
stitute Dr.  Watts  for  '  Annie  Rooney.'  We 
should  lose  '  Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay '  entire- 
ly, which  is  a  point  in  its  favor." 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  said  the  ge- 
nial old  gentleman.  "  I  rather  like  that 
song." 


••  Did  you  ever  hear  me  sing  it  ?' 
asked  the  Idiot. 

"Never  mind," 
returned  the  ge- 
nial old,gentle- 
man, hastily.  "Per- 
haps you  are  right, 
after  all." 

The  Idiot  smiled, 
and  resumed: "Our 
shops  would  be 
perpetually  closed, 
and  an  enormous 
loss  to  the  shop- 
keepers would  be 
sure  to  follow.  Mr. 
Pedagog's  theory 
that  we  should 
have  Su  nday 
breakfasts  every 
day  is  aot  tenable, 
for  the  reason  that 
with  a  perpetual 
day  of  rest  agri- 
culture would  die 
out,  food  products 
would  be  killed  off 


by  unpulled  weeds  ;  in  fact,  we  should  go 
back  to  that  really  unfortunate  period  when 
women  were  without  dress-  makers,  and  man 's 
chief  object  in  life  was  to  christen  animals  as 
he  met  them,  and  to  abstain  from  apples,  wis- 
dom, and  full  dress." 

"The  Idiot  is  right,"  said  the  Biblioma- 
niac. "  It  would  not  be  a  very  good  thing 
for  the  world  if  every  day  were  Sunday. 
Wash-day  is  a  necessity  of  life.  I  am  will- 
ing to  admit  this,  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that 
wash-day  meals  are  invariably  atrocious. 
Contracts  would  be  void,  as  a  rule,  because 
Sunday  is  a  dies  non." 

"  A  what  ?"  asked  the  Idiot. 

"  A  non-existent  day  in  a  business  sense," 
put  in  the  School-master. 

"Of  course,"  said  the  landlady,  scornful- 
ly. "  Any  person  who  knows  anything 
knows  that." 

"Then,  madame,"  returned  the  Idiot,  ris- 
ing from  his  chair,  and  putting  a  handful  of 
sweet  crackers  in  his  pocket—"  then  I  must 
put  in  a  claim  for  $104  from  you,  having 
been  charged  at  the  rate  of  one  dollar  a 
day  for  104  dies  nons  in  the  two  years  I 
have  been  with  you." 


"  Indeed !"  returned  the  lady,  sharply. 
"Very  well.  And  I  shall  put  in  a  counter- 
claim for  the  lunches  you  carry  away  from 
breakfast  every  morning  in  your  pockets." 

"  In  that  event  we'll  call  it  off,  madame," 
returned  the  Idiot,  as  with  a  courtly  bow 
and  a  pleasant  smile  he  left  the  room. 

"  Well,  I  call  him  '  off,'  "  was  all  the  land- 
lady could  say,  as  the  other  guests  took 
their  departure. 

And  of  course  the  School-master  agreed 
with  her. 


VII 

"  OUR  streets  appear  to  be  as  far  from  per- 
fect as  ever,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac  with  a 
sigh,  as  he  looked  out  through  the  window 
at  the  great  pools  of  water  that  gathered  in 
the  basins  made  by  the  sinking  of  the  Bel- 
gian blocks.  "  We'd  better  go  back  to  the 
cowpaths  of  our  fathers." 

"  There  is  a  great  deal  in  what  you  say," 
observed  the  School  -  master.  "The  cow- 
path  has  all  the  solidity  of  mother  earth, 
and  none  of  the  distracting  noises  we  get 
from  the  pavements  that  obtain  to-day.  It 
is  porous  and  absorbs  the  moisture.  The 
Belgian  pavement  is  leaky,  and  lets  it  run 
into  our  cellars.  We  might  do  far  worse 
than  to  go  back — ' 

"  Excuse  me  for  having  an  opinion,"  said 
the  Idiot,  "  but  the  man  of  enterprise  can't 
afford  to  indulge  in  the  luxury  of  the  som- 
nolent cowpath.  It  is  too  quiet.  It  con- 
duces to  sleep,  which  is  a  luxury  business 


men  cannot  afford  to  indulge  in  too  freely* 
Man  must  be  up  and  doing.  The  prosperity 
of  a  great  city  is  to  my  mind  directly  due 
to  its  noise  and  clatter,  which  effectually 
put  a  stop  to  napping,  and  keep  men  at  all 
times  wide  awake." 

"  This  is  a  Welsh-rabbit  idea,  I  fancy," 
said  the  School-master,  quietly.  He  had 
overheard  the  Idiot's  confidences,  as  re- 
vealed to  the  genial  Imbiber,  regarding  the 
sources  of  some  of  his  ideas. 

"  Not  at  all,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  These 
ideas  are  beef — not  Welsh -rabbit.  They 
are  the  result  of  much  thought.  If  you  will 
put  your  mind  on  the  subject,  you  will  see 
for  yourself  that  there  is  more  in  my  theory 
than  there  is  in  yours.  The  prosperity  of  a 
locality  is  the  greater  as  the  noise  in  its 
vicinity  increases.  It  is  in  the  quiet  neigh- 
borhood that  man  stagnates.  Where  do 
we  find  great  business  houses  ?  Where  do 
we  find  great  fortunes  made  ?  Where  do 
we  find  the  busy  bees  who  make  the  honey 
that  enables  posterity  to  get  into  Society 
and  do  nothing  ?  Do  we  pick  up  our  mill- 
ions on  the  cowpath  ?  I  guess  not.  Do 
we  erect  our  most  princely  business  houses 


along  the  roads  laid  out  by  our  bovine  sis- 
ter? I  think  not.  Does  the  man  who  goes 
from  the  towpath  to  the  White  House  take 
the  short  cut  ?  I  fancy  not.  He  goes  over 
the  block  pavement.  He  seeks  the  home 
of  the  noisy,  clattering  street  before  he 
lands  in  the  shoes  of  Washington.  The  man 
who  sticks  to  the  cowpath  may  be  able  to 
drink  milk,  but  he  never  wears  diamonds." 

"  All  that  you  say  is  very  true,  but  it  is 
not  based  on  any  fundamental  principle. 
It  is  so  because  it  happens  to  be  so,"  re- 
turned the  School  -  master.  "If  it  were 
man's  habit  to  have  the  streets  laid  out  on 
the  old  cowpath  principle  in  his  cities  he 
would  be  quite  as  energetic,  quite  as  pros- 
perous, as  he  is  now." 

"  No  fundamental  principle  involved  ? 
There  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  all 
business  success  involved,"  said  the  Idiot, 
warming  up  to  his  subject.  "  What  is  the 
basic  quality  in  the  good  business  man  ? 
Alertness.  What  is  'alertness?'  Wide- 
awakeishness.  In  this  town  it  is  impossi- 
ble for  a  man  to  sleep  after  a  stated  hour, 
and  for  no  other  reason  than  that  the  clat- 
ter of  the  pavements  prevents  him.  As  a 


promoter  of  alertness,  where  is  your  cow- 
path  ?  The  cowpaths  of  the  Catskills,  and 
we  all  know  the  mountains  are  riddled  by 
'em,  didn't  keep  Rip  Van  Winkle  awake, 
and  I'll  wager  Mr.  Whitechoker  here  a 
year's  board  that  there  isn't  a  man  in  his 
congregation  who  can  sleep  a  half-hour — 
much  less  twenty  years — with  Broadway 
within  hearing  distance. 

"  I  tell  you,  Mr.  Pedagog,"  he  continued, 
"  it  is  the  man  from  the  cowpath  who  gets 
buncoed.  It's  the  man  from  the  cowpath 
who  can't  make  a  living  even  out  of  what 
he  calls  his  '  New  York  Store.'  It  is  the 
man  from  the  cowpath  who  rejoices  be- 
cause he  can  sell  ten  dollars'  worth  of 
sheep's -wool  for  five  dollars,  and  is  hap- 
py when  he  goes  to  meeting  dressed  up  in  a 
four-dollar  suit  of  clothes  that  has  cost  him 
twenty." 

"  Your  theory,  my  young  friend,"  observed 
the  School-master,  "  is  as  fragile  as  this 
cup  " — tapping  his  coffee-cup.  "  The  coun- 
tryman of  whom  you  speak  is  up  and  doing 
long  before  you  or  I  or  your  successful 
merchant,  who  has  waxed  great  on  noise 
as  you  put  it,  is  awake.  If  the  early  bird 


catches  the  worm,  what  becomes  of  your 
theory  ?" 

"  The  early  bird  does  get  the  bait,"  re- 
plied the  Idiot.  "  But  he  does  not  catch 
the  fish,  and  I'll  offer  the  board  another 
wager  that  the  Belgian  block  merchant 
is  wider  awake  at  8  A.M.,  when  he  first 
opens  his  eyes,  than  his  suburban  brother 
who  gets  up  at  at  five  is  all  day.  It's  the 
extent  to  which  the  eyes  are  opened  that 
counts,  and  as  for  your  statement  that  the 
fact  that  prosperity  and  noisy  streets  go 
hand  in  hand  is  true  only  because  it  hap- 
pens to  be  so,  that  is  an  argument  which 
may  be  applied  to  any  truth  in  existence.  I 
am  because  I  happen  to  be,  not  because  I 
am.  You  are  what  you  are  because  you 
are,  because  if  you  were  not,  you  would  not 
be  what  you  are." 

"  Your  logic  is  delightful,"  said  the 
School-master,  scornfully. 

"  I  strive  to  please,"  replied  the  Idiot. 
"  But  I  do  agree  with  the  Bibliomaniac  that 
our  streets  are  far  from  perfection,"  he 
added.  "  In  my  opinion  they  should  be 
laid  in  strata.  On  the  ground-floor  should 
be  the  sewers  and  telegraph  pipes;  above 


this  should  be  the  water-mains,  then  a 
layer  for  trucks ,  then  a  broad  stratum  for 
carriages,  above  which  should  be  a  prome- 
nade for  pedestrians.  The  promenade  for 
pedestrians  should  be  divided  into  four  sec- 
tions—  one  for  persons  of  leisure,  one  for 
those  in  a  hurry,  one  for  peddlers,  and  one 
for  beggars." 

"Highly  original,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  And  so  cheap,"  added  the  School-mas- 
ter. 

"  In  no  part  of  the  world,"  said  the  Idiot, 
in  response  to  the  last  comment,  "  do  we 
get  something  for  nothing.  Of  course  this 
scheme  would  be  costly,  but  it  would  in- 
crease prosperity — ' 

"  Ha !  ha  !"  laughed  the  School-master, 
satirically. 

"  Laugh  away,  but  you  cannot  gainsay 
my  point.  Our  prosperity  would  increase, 
for  we  should  not  be  always  excavating  to 
get  at  our  pipes ;  our  surface  cars  with  a 
clear  track  would  gain  for  us  rapid  transit , 
our  truck-drivers  would  not  be  subjected  to 
the  temptations  of  stopping  by  the  way-side 
to  overturn  a  coupe,  or  to  run  down  a  pe- 
destrian ,  our  fine  equipages  would  in  con- 


sequence  need  fewer  repairs,  and  as  for 
the  pedestrians,  the  beggars,  if  relegated  to 
themselves,  would  be  forced  out  of  business 
as  would  also  the  street-peddlers.  The  men 
in  a  hurry  would  not  be  delayed  by  loungers, 
beggars,  and  peddlers,  and  the  loungers 
would  derive  inestimable  benefit  from  the 
arrangement  in  the  saving  of  wear  and  tear 
on  their  clothes  and  minds  by  contact  with 
the  busy  world." 

"  It  would  be  delightful,"  acceded  the 
School  -  master,  "  particularly  on  Sundays, 
when  they  were  all  loungers." 

"  Yes,"  replied  the  Idiot.  "  It  would  be 
delightful  then,  especially  in  summer,  when 
covered  with  an  awning  to  shield  prome- 
naders  from  the  sun." 

Mr.  Pedagog  sighed,  and  the  Bibliomani- 
ac, wearily  declining  a  second  cup  of  coffee, 
left  the  table  with  the  Doctor,  earnestly 
discussing  with  that  worthy  gentleman  the 
causes  of  weak  minded  ness. 


VIII 

"THERE'S  a  friend  of  mine  up  near  River- 
dale,"  said  the  Idiot,  as  he  unfolded  his 
napkin  and  let  his  bill  flutter  from  it  to  the 
floor,  "  who's  tried  to  make  a  name  for  him- 
self in  literature." 

"  What's  his  name  ?"  asked  the  Biblio- 
maniac, interested  at  once. 

"  That's  just  the  trouble.  He  hasn't  made 
it  yet,"  replied  the  Idiot.  "  He  hasn't  suc- 
ceeded in  his  courtship  of  the  Muse,  and 
beyond  himself  and  a  few  friends  his  name 
is  utterly  unknown." 

"  What  work  has  he  tried  ?"  queried  the 
School-master,  pouring  unadmonished  two 
portions  of  skimmed  milk  over  his  oat- 
meal. 

"  A  little  of  everything.  First  he  wrote  a 
novel.  It  had  an  immense  circulation,  and 
he  only  lost  $300  on  it.  All  of  his  friends 
took  a  copy — I've  got  one  that  he  gave  me 
—and  I  believe  two  hundred  newspapers 


were  fortunate  enough  to  secure  the  book 
for  review.  His  father  bought  two,  and 
tried  to  obtain  the  balance  of  the  edition, 
but  didn't  have  enough  money.  That  was 
gratifying,  but  gratification  is  more  apt  to 
deplete  than  to  strengthen  a  bank  account." 

"I  had  not  expected  so  extraordinarily 
wise  an  observation  from  one  so  unusually 
unwise,"  said  the  School-master,  coldly. 

"  Thank  you,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  But 
I  think  your  remark  is  rather  contradictory. 
You  would  naturally  expect  wise  observa- 
tions from  the  unusually  unwise;  that  is,  if 
your  teaching  that  the  expression  '  unusual- 
ly unwise '  is  but  another  form  of  the  ex- 
pression '  usually  wise '  is  correct.  But,  as 
I  was  saying,  when  the  genial  instructor  of 
youth  interrupted  me  with  his  flatter)',"  con- 
tinued the  Idiot,  "  gratification  is  gratifying 
but  not  filling,  so  my  friend  concluded  that 
he  had  better  give  up  novel-writing  and 
try  jokes.  He  kept  at  that  a  year,  and 
managed  to  clear  his  postage-stamps.  His 
jokes  were  good,  but  too  classic  for  the 
tastes  of  the  editors.  Editors  are  peculiar. 
They  have  no  respect  for  age — particularly 
in  the  matter  of  jests.  Some  of  my  friend's 


jokes  had  seemed  good  enough  for  Plutarch 
to  print  when  he  had  a  publisher  at  his 
mercy,  but  they  didn't  seem  to  suit  the  high 
and  mighty  products  of  this  age  who  sit  in 
judgment  on  such  things  in  the  comic-paper 
offices.  So  he  gave  up  jokes." 

"  Does  he  still  know  you  ?"  asked  the 
landlady. 

"  Yes,  madame,"  observed  the  Idiot. 

"  Then  he  hasn't  given  up  all  jokes,"  she 
retorted,  with  fine  scorn. 

"  Tee-he-hee !"  laughed  the  School-mas- 
ter. "  Pretty  good,  Mrs.  Smithers — pretty 
good." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  That  is  good,  and, 
by  Jove !  it  differs  from  your  butter,  Mrs. 
Smithers,  because  it's  entirely  fresh.  It's 
good  enough  to  print,  and  I  don't  think  the 
butter  is." 

"  What  did  your  friend  do  next  ?"  asked 
Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"  He  was  employed  by  a  funeral  director 
in  Philadelphia  to  write  obituary  verses  for 
memorial  cards." 

"  And  was  he  successful  ?" 

"  For  a  time ;  but  he  lost  his  position 
because  of  an  error  made  by  a  careless 


compositor   in   a   marble  -  yard.     He   had 
written, 

" '  Here  lies  the  hero  of  a  hundred  fights — 

Approximated  he  a  perfect  man; 
He  fought  for  country  and  his  country's  rights, 
And  in  the  hottest  battles  led  the  van.'" 

"  Fine  in  sentiment  and  in  execution !" 
observed  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"Truly  so,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "But 
when  the  compositor  in  the  marble-yard  got 
it  engraved  on  the  monument,  my  friend 
was  away,  and  when  the  army  post  that  was 
to  pay  the  bill  received  the  monument,  the 
quatrain  read, 

" '  Here  lies  the  hero  of  a  hundred  flights — 

Approximated  he  a  perfect  one;v 
He  fought  his  country  and  his  country's  rights, 
And  in  the  hottest  battles  led  the  run.' " 

"  Awful !"  ejaculated  the  Minister. 
1     "  Dreadful !"  said  the  landlady,  forgetting 
to  be  sarcastic. 

"  What  happened  ?"  asked  the  School- 
master. 

"  He  was  bounced,  of  course,  without  a 
cent  of  pay,  and  the  company  failed  the 


next  week,  so  he  couldn't  make  anything  by 
suing  for  what  they  owed  him." 

"  Mighty  hard  luck,"  said  the  Biblio- 
maniac. 

"  Very ;  but  there  was  one  bright  side  to 
the  case,"  observed  the  Idiot.  "  He  man- 
aged to  sell  both  versions  of  the  quatrain 
afterwards  for  five  dollars.  He  sold  the 
original  one  to  a  religious  weekly  for  a 
dollar,  and  got  four  dollars  for  the  other  one 
from  a  comic  paper.  Then  he  wrote  an 
anecdote  about  the  whole  thing  for  a  Sun- 
day newspaper,  and  got  three  dollars  more 
out  of  it." 

"And  what  is  your  friend  doing  now?" 
asked  the  Doctor. 

"  Oh,  he's  making  a  mint  of  money  now, 
but  no  name." 

"  In  literature  ?" 

"  Yes.  He  writes  advertisements  on  sal- 
ary," returned  the  Idiot.  "  He  is  writing 
now  a  recommendation  of  tooth-powder  in 
Indian  dialect." 

"  Why  didn't  he  try  writing  an  epic  ?"  said 
the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  Because,"  replied  the  Idiot,  "  the  one 
aim  of  his  life  has  been  to  be  original,  and 


'"HE  GAVE  vv  JOKES'" 


he  couldn't   reconcile  that  with   epic  po« 
etry." 

At  which  remark  the  landlady  stooped 
over,  and  recovering  the  Idiot's  bill  from 
under  the  table,  called  the  maid,  and  osten- 
tatiously requested  her  to  hand  it  to  the  Id- 
iot. He,  taking  a  cigarette  from  his  pocket, 
thanked  the  maid  for  the  attention,  and  roll- 
ing the  slip  into  a  taper,  thoughtfully  stuck 
one  end  of  it  into  the  alcohol  light  under 
the  coffee-pot,  and  lighting  the  cigarette 
with  it,  walked  nonchalantly  from  the  room. 


IX 

"  I'VE  just  been  reading  a  book,"  began 
the  Idiot. 

"  I  thought  you  looked  rather  pale,"  said 
the  School-master. 

"Yes,"  returned  the  Idiot,  cheerfully,  "it 
made  me  feel  pale.  It  was  about  the  pleas- 
ures of  country  life ;  and  when  I  contrasted 
rural  blessedness  as  it  was  there  depicted 
with  urban  life  as  we  live  it,  I  felt  as  if  my 
youth  were  being  thrown  away.  I  still  feel 
as  if  I  were  wasting  my  sweetness  on  the 
desert  air." 

"  Why  don't  you  move  ?"  queried  the 
Bibliomaniac,  suggestively. 

"  If  I  were  purely  selfish  I  should  do  so 
at  once,  but  I  am,  like  my  good  friend  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  a  slave  to  duty.  I  deem  it 
my  duty  to  stay  here  to  keep  the  School- 
master fully  informed  in  the  various  branch- 
es of  knowledge  which  are  day  by  day 
opened  up,  many  of  which  seem  to  be  so 


far  beyond  the  reach  of  one  of  his  conserv- 
ative habits ;  to  assist  Mr.  Whitechoker  in 
his  crusades  against  vice  at  this  table  and 
elsewhere;  to  give  the  Bibliomaniac  the 
benefit  of  my  advice  in  regard  to  those  pre- 
cious little  tomes  he  no  longer  buys — to 
make  life  worth  the  living  for  all  of  you,  to 
say  nothing  of  enabling  Mrs.  Smithers  to 
keep  up  the  extraordinarily  high  standard 
of  this  house  by  means  of  the  hard-earned 
stipend  I  pay  to  her  every  Monday  morn- 
ing." 

"Every  Monday?"  queried  the  School- 
master. 

"  Every  Monday,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"That  is,  of  course,  every  Monday  that  I 
pay.  The  things  one  gets  to  eat  in  the 
country,  the  air  one  breathes,  the  utter 
freedom  from  restraint,  the  thousand  and 
more  things  one  enjoys  in  the  suburbs  that 
are  not  attainable  here  —  it  is  these  that 
make  my  heart  yearn  for  the  open." 

"  Well,  it's  all  rot,"  said  the  School-mas- 
ter, impatiently.  "  Country  life  is  ideal 
only  in  books.  Books  do  not  tell  of  run- 
ning for  trains  through-  blinding  snow- 
storms; writers  do  not  expatiate  on  the 


'A   LITTLE   GARDEN   OF  MY   OWN,  WHERE   I   COULD   RAISE 
AN   OCCASIONAL   CAN    OF   TOMATOES  '  " 


delights  of  waking  on  cold  winter  nights 
and  finding  your  piano  and  parlor  furni- 
ture afloat  because  of  bursted  pipes,  with 
the  plumber,  like  Sheridan  at  Winchester, 
tventy  miles  away.  They  are  dumb  on  the 
subject  of  the  ecstasy  one  feels  when  pushing 
a  twenty-pound  lawn-mower  up  and  down  a 
weed  patch  at  the  end  of  a  wearisome  hot 
summer's  day.  They  are  silent — ' 

"  Don't  get  excited,  Mr.  Pedagog,  please," 
interrupted  the  Idiot.  "  I  am  not  contem- 
plating leaving  you  and  Mrs.  Smithers,  but 
I  do  pine  for  a  little  garden  of  my  own, 
where  I  could  raise  an  occasional  can  of 
tomatoes.  I  dream  sometimes  of  getting 
milk  fresh  from  the  pump,  instead  of  twenty- 
four  hours  after  it  has  been  drawn,  as  we 
do  here.  In  my  musings  it  seems  to  me  to 
be  almost  idyllic  to  have  known  a  spring 
chicken  in  his  infancy ;  to  have  watched  a 
hind-quarter  of  lamb  gambolling  about  its 
native  heath  before  its  muscles  became 
adamant,  and  before  chopped-up  celery  tops 
steeped  in  vinegar  were  poured  upon  it  in 
the  hope  of  hypnotizing  boarders  into  the 
belief  that  spring  lamb  and  mint-sauce  lay 
before  them.  What  care  I  how  hard  it  is 


to  rise  every  morning  before  six  in  winter 
to  thaw  out  the  boiler,  so 
long  as  the  night  coming 
finds  me  seated  in  the  ge- 
nial glow  of  the  gas  log! 
What  man  is  he  that  would 
complain  of  having  to 
bale  out  his  cellar  ev- 
ery week,   if,  on   the 
other  hand,  that  cellar 
gains  thereby 
a  fertility  that 


keeps 
its  floor 

sheeny,  soft,  and 
green  —  an  interior 
tennis-court — from 
spring  to  spring, 
causing  the  glad- 
some click  of  the 
lawn  -  mower  to  be 
heard  within  its 
walls  all  through 
the  still  watches  of 


*A  HIND-QUARTER   OF   LAMB 

GAMBOLLING    ABOUT   ITS 

NATIVE    HEATH  '  " 


the  winter  day  ?  I  tell  you,  sir,  it  is  the 
life  to  lead,  that  of  our  rural  brother.  I 
do  not  believe  that  in  this  whole  vast  city 
there  is  a  cellar  like  that — an  in-door  gar- 
den-patch, as  it  were." 

"  No,"  returned  the  Doctor;  "and  it  is  a 
good  thing  there  isn't.  There  is  enough 
sickness  in  the  world  without  bringing  any 
of  your  rus  ideas  in  urbe.  I've  lived  in  the 
country,  sir,  and  I  assure  you  it  is  not  what 
it  is  written  up  to  be.  Country  life  is  mis- 
ery, melancholy,  and  malaria." 

"  You  must  have  struck  a  profitable  sec- 
tion, Doctor,"  returned  the  Idiot,  taking 
possession  of  three  steaming  buckwheat 
cakes  to  the  dismay  of  Mr.  Whitechoker, 
who  was  about  to  reach  out  for  them  him- 
self. "  And  I  should  have  supposed  that 
your  good  business  sense  would  have  re- 
strained you  from  leaving." 

"  Then  the  countryman  is  poor — always 
poor,"  continued  the  Doctor,  ignoring  the 
Idiot's  sarcastic  comments. 

"  Ah  !  that  accounts  for  it,"  observed  the 
Idiot.  "  I  see  why  you  did  not  stay ;  for  what 
shall  it  profit  a  man  to  save  a  patient  if  prac- 
tice, like  virtue,  is  to  be  its  own  reward  ?" 


"  Your  suggestion,  sir,"  retorted  the  Doc- 
tor, "betrays  an  unhealthy  frame  of  mind." 

"  That's  all  riglit,  Doctor/'  returned  the 
Idiot ;  "  but  please  do  not  diagnose  the 
case  any  further.  I  can't  afford  an  expert 
opinion  as  to  my  mental  condition.  But  to 
return  to  our  subject :  you  two  gentlemen 
appear  to  have  had  unhappy  experiences 
in  country  life — quite  different  from  those 
of  a  friend  of  mine  who  owns  a  farm.  He 
doesn't  have  to  run  for  trains;  he  is  inde- 
pendent of  plumbers,  because  the  only  pipes 
in  his  house  are  for  smoking  purposes. 
The  farm  produces  corn  enough  to  keep 
his  family  supplied  all  the  year  round  and 
to  sell  a  balance  at  a  profit.  Oats  and  wheat 
are  harvested  to  an  extent  which  keeps  the 
cattle  and  declares  dividends  besides.  He 
never  suffers  from  the  cold  or  heat.  He  is 
never  afraid  of  losing  his  house  or  barns  by 
fire,  because  the  whole  fire  department  of 
the  neighboring  village  is,  to  a  man,  in  love 
with  the  house-keeper's  daughter,  and  is  al- 
ways on  hand  in  force.  The  chickens  are 
the  envy  and  pride  of  the  county,  and  there 
are  so  many  of  them  that  they  have  to  take 
turns  in  going  to  roost.  The  pigs  are  the 


most  intelligent  of  their  kind,  and  are  so 
happy  they  never  grunt.  In  fact,  every- 
thing is  lovely  and  cheap,  the  only  thing 
that  hangs  high  being  the  goose." 


"  '  THE   GLADSOME 


LAWN-MOWER  '  " 


"  Quite  an  ideal,  no  doubt,"  put  in  the 
School-master,  scornfully.  "  I  suppose  his 
is  one  of  those  model  farms  with  steam- 
pipes  under  the  walks  to  melt  the  snow  in 


winter,  and  of  course  there  is  a  vein  of  coal 
growing  right  up  into  his  furnace  ready  to 
be  lit." 

"Yes,"  observed  the  Bibliomaniac;  "and 
no  doubt  the  chickens  lay  eggs  in  every 
style — poached,  fried,  scrambled,  and  boiled. 
The  weeds  in  the  garden  grow  so  fast,  I 
suppose,  that  they  pull  themselves  up  by 
the  roots ;  and  if  there  is  anything  left  un- 
done at  the  end  of  the  day  I  presume  tramps 
in  dress  suits,  and  courtly  in  manner,  spring 
out  of  the  ground  and  finish  up  for  him." 

:'  I'll  bet  he's  not  on  good  terms  with  his 
neighbors  if  he  has  everything  you  speak  of 
in  such  perfection.  These  farmers  get 
frightfully  jealous  of  each  other,"  asserted 
the  Doctor,  with  a  positiveness  that  seemed 
to  be  born  of  experience. 

"  He  never  quarrelled  with  one  of  them 
in  his  life,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  He  doesn't 
know  them  well  enough  to  quarrel  with 
them  ;  in  fact,  I  doubt  if  he  ever  sees  them 
at  all.  He's  very  exclusive." 

"Of  course  he  is  a  born  farmer  to  get 
everything  the  way  he  has  it,"  suggested 
Mrs.  Smithers. 

"  No,  he  isn't.     He's  a  broker,"  said  the 

6 


Idiot,  "and  a  very  successful  one.  I  see 
him  on  the  street  every  day." 

"  Does  he  employ  a  man  to  run  the  farm  ?" 
asked  the  Clergyman . 

"  No,"  returned  the  Idiot,  "  he  has  too 
much  sense  and  too  few  dollars  to  do  any 
such  foolish  thing  as  that." 

"It  must  be  one  of  those  self-winding 
stock  farms,"  put  in  the  School  -  master, 
scornfully.  "  But  I  don't  see  how  he  can 
be  a  successful  broker  and  make  money  off 
his  farm  at  the  same  time.  Your  state- 
ments do  not  agree,  either.  You  said  he 
never  had  to  run  for  trains." 

"  Well,  he  never  has,"  returned  the  Idiot, 
calmly.  "  He  never  goes  near  his  farm.  He 
doesn't  have  to.  It's  leased  to  the  husband 
of  the  house-keeper  whose  daughter  has  a 
crush  on  the  fire  department.  He  takes 
his  pay  in  produce,  and  gets  more  than  if 
he  took  it  in  cash  on  the  basis  of  the  New 
York  vegetable  market." 

"  Then  you  have  got  us  into  an  argument 
about  country  life  that  ends —  "  began  the 
School-master,  indignantly. 

"  That  ends  where  it  leaves  off,"  retorted 
the  Idiot,  departing  with  a  smile  on  his  lips. 


"  He's  an  Idiot  from  Idaho,"  asserted  the 
Bibliomaniac. 

"  Yes ;  but  I'm  afraid  idiocy  is  a  little 
contagious,"  observed  the  Doctor,  with  a 
grin  and  sidelong  glance  at  the  School- 
master. 


"GOOD -MORNING,  gentlemen,"  said  the 
Idiot,  as  he  seated  himself  at  the  breakfast- 
table  and  glanced  over  his  mail. 

"  Good-morning  yourself,"  returned  the 
Poet.  "You  have  an  unusually  large  num- 
ber of  letters  this  morning.  All  checks,  I 
hope  ?" 

"Yes,"  replied  the  Idiot.  "All  checks 
of  one  kind  or  another.  Mostly  checks 
on  ambition — otherwise,  rejections  from  my 
friends  the  editors." 

"  You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you  write 
for  the  papers  ?"  put  in  the  School-master, 
with  an  incredulous  smile. 

"I  try  to,"  returned  the  Idiot,  meekly. 
"  If  the  papers  don't  take  'em,  I  find  them 
useful  in  curing  my  genial  friend  who  im- 
bibes of  insomnia." 

"What  do  you  write— advertisements ?" 
queried  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  No.    Advertisement  writing  is  an  art  to 


which  I  dare  not  aspire.  It's  too  great  a 
tax  on  the  brain,"  replied  the  Idiot. 

"  Tax  on  what  ?"  asked  the  Doctor.  He 
was  going  to  squelch  the  Idiot. 

"  The  brain,"  returned  the  latter,  not 
ready  to  be  squelched.  "  It's  a  little  thing 
people  use  to  think  with,  Doctor.  I'd  ad- 
vise you  to  get  one."  Then  he  added,  "  I 
write  poems  and  foreign  letters  mostly." 

"I  did  not  know  that  you  had  ever  been 
abroad,"  said  the  clergyman. 


DON'T 


"  I  never  have,"  returned  the  Idiot. 

"  Then  how,  may  I  ask,"  said  Mr.  White- 
choker,  severely,  "  how  can  you  write  for- 
eign letters  ?" 

"  With  my  stub  pen,  of  course,"  replied 
the  Idiot.  "  How  did  you  suppose — with  an 
oyster-knife?" 

The  clergyman  sighed. 

"  I  should  like  to  hear  some  of  your  po- 
ems," said  the  Poet. 

"  Very  well,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  Here's 
one  that  has  just  returned  from  the  Bengal 
Monthly.  It's  about  a  writer  who  died  some 
years  ago.  Shakespeare's  his  name.  You've 
heard  of  Shakespeare,  haven't  you,  Mr.  Ped- 
agog?"  he  added. 

Then,  as  there  was  no  answer,  he  read  the 
verse,  which  was  as  follows  : 

SETTLED. 

Yes !  Shakespeare  wrote  the  plays — 'tis  clear  to  me. 

Lord  Bacon's  claim's  condemned  before  the  bar. 
He'd  not  have  penned,  "what  fools  these  mortals  be!" 

But — more  correct — "what  fools  these  mortals  are!" 

"  That's  not  bad,"  said  the  Poet. 
"  Thanks,"  returned  the  Idiot.     "  I  wish 
you  were  an  editor.    I  wrote  that  last  spring, 


and  it  has  been  coming  back  to  me  at  the 
rate  of  once  a  week  ever  since." 

"  It  is  too  short,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  It's  an  epigram,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  How 
many  yards  long  do  you  think  epigrams 
should  be  ?" 

The  Bibliomaniac  scorned  to  reply. 

"  I  agree  with  the  Bibliomaniac,"  said  the 
School-master.  "  It  is  too  short.  People 
want  greater  quantity." 

"  Well,  here  is  quantity  for  you,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  Quantity  as  she  is  not  wanted  by 
nine  comic  papers  I  wot  of.  This  poem  is 
called  : 

'"THE  TURNING  OF  THE  WORM. 

" '  How  hard  my  fate  perhaps  you'll  gather  in, 

My  dearest  reader,  when  I  tell  you  that 
I  entered  into  this  fair  world  a  twin — 
The  one  was  spare  enough,  the  other  fat. 

"  '  I  was,  of  course,  the  lean  one  of  the  two, 
The  homelier  as  well,  and  consequently 
In  ecstasy  o'er  Jim  my  parents  flew, 
And  good  of  me  was  spoken  accident'ly. 

"-'  As  boys  we  went  to  school,  and  Jim,  of  course, 

Was  e'er  his  teacher's  favorite,  and  ranked 
Among  the  lads  renowned  for  moral  force, 
Whilst  I  was  every  day  right  soundly  spanked. 


'  Jim  had  an  angel  face,  but  there  he  stopped. 

I  never  knew  a  lad  who'd  sin  so  oft 
And  look  so  like  a  branch  of  heaven  lopped 
From  off  the  parent  trunk  that  grows  aloft. 

'  I  seemed  an  imp—indeed  'twas  often  said 

That  I  resembled  much  Beelzebub. 
My  face  was  freckled  and  my  hair  was  red — 
The  kind  of  looking  boy  that  men  call  scrub. 

'  Kind  deeds,  however,  were  my  constant  thought ; 

In  everything  I  did  the  best  I  could; 
I  said  my  prayers  thrice  daily,  and  I  sought 
In  all  my  ways  to  do  the  right  and  good. 

'  On  Saturdays  I'd  do  my  Monday's  sums, 

While  Jim  would  spend  the  day  in  search  of  fun; 
He'd  sneak  away  and  steal  the  neighbors'  plums, 
And,  strange  to  say,  to  earth  was  never  run. 

'  Whilst  I,  when  study-time  was  haply  through, 

Would  seek  my  brother  in  the  neighbor's  orchard; 
Would  find  the  neighbor  there  with  anger  blue, 
And  as  the  thieving  culprit  would  be  tortured. 

'  The  sums  I'd  done  he'd  steal,  this  lad  forsaken, 

Then  change  my  work,  so  that  a  paltry  four 
Wou)d  be  my  mark,  whilst  he  had  overtaken 
The  maximum  and  all  the  prizes  bore. 

1  In  later  years  we  loved  the  self-same  maid; 

We  sent  her  little  presents,  sweets,  bouquets. 
For  which,  alas !  'twas  I  that  always  paid ; 
And  Jim  the  maid  now  honors  and  obeys. 

'  We  entered  politics— in  different  roles, 
And  for  a  minor  office  each  did  run. 


Twas  I  was  left— left  badly  at  the  polls, 
Because  of  fishy  things  that  Jim  had  done. 

'  When  Jim  went  into  business  and  failed, 

I  signed  his  notes  and  freed  him  from  the  strife 
Which  bankruptcy  and  ruin  hath  entailed 
On  them  that  lead  a  queer  financial  life. 

'  Then,  penniless,  I  learned  that  Jim  had  set 

Aside  before  his  failure — hard  to  tell ! — 
A  half  a  million  dollars  on  his  pet — 
His  Mrs.  Jim— the  former  lovely  Nell. 

'  That  wearied  me  of  Jim.     It  may  be  right 

For  one  to  bear  another's  cross,  but  I 
Quite  fail  to  see  it  in  its  proper  light, 

If  that's  the  rule  man  should  be  guided  by. 

'  And  since  a  fate  perverse  has  had  the  wit 
To  mix  us  up  so  that  the  one's  deserts 
Upon  the  shoulders  of  the  other  sit, 
No  matter  how  the  other  one  it  hurts, 

'  I  am  resolved  to  take  some  mortal's  life  ; 

Just  when,  or  where,  or  how,  I  do  not  reck, 
So  long  as  law  will  end  this  horrid  strife 
And  twist  my  dear  twin  brother's  sinful  neck.'  " 


"  There,"  said  the  Idiot,  putting  down  the 
manuscript.  "  How's  that  ?" 

"  I  don't  like  it,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker. 
"  It  is  immoral  and  vindictive.  You  should 
accept  the  hardships  of  life,  no  matter  how 


unjust.     The  conclusion  of  your  poem  hor- 
rifies me,  sir.     I — ' 

"  Have  you  tried  your  hand  at  dialect  poe- 
try ?"  asked  the  Doctor. 

"  Yes;  once,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  I  sent  it  to 
the  Great  Western  Weekly.  Oh  yes.  Here 
it  is.  Sent  back  with  thanks.  It's  an  oc- 
tette written  in  cigar-box  dialect." 

"  In  wh-a-at  ?"  asked  the  Poet. 
* "  Cigar-box  dialect.     Here  it  is  : 

"  '  O  Manuel  garcia  alonzo, 

Colorado  especial  H.  Clay, 
Invincible  flora  alphonzo, 

Cigarette  panatella  el  rey, 
Victoria  Reina  selectas — 

O  twofer  madura  grande* — 
O  conchas  oscuro  perfectas, 

You  drive  all  my  sorrows  away.'" 

"  Ingenious,  but  vicious,"  said  the  School- 
master, who  does  not  smoke. 

"  Again  thanks.  How  is  this  for  a  son- 
net ?"  said  the  Idiot : 

"  '  V/hen  to  the  sessions  of  sweet  silent  thought 
I  summon  up  remembrance  of  things  past, 
I  sigh  the  lack  of  many  a  thing  I  sought. 
And  with  old  woes  new  wail  my  dear  time's  waste  : 
Then  can  I  drown  an  eye,  unused  to  flow, 
For  precious  friends  hid  in  death's  dateless  night. 


And  weep  afresh  love's  long  since  cancel'd  woe, 
And  moan  the  expense  of  many  a  vanish'd  sight : 
Then  can  I  grieve  at  grievances  foregone, 
And  heavily  from  woe  to  woe  tell  o'er 

Which  I  now  pay  as  if  not  paid  before. 
But  if  the  while  I  think  of  thee,  dear  friend! 
All  losses  are  restored  and  sorrows  end.' " 

"  It  is  bosh  !"  said  the  School-master. 

The  Poet  smiled  quietly. 

"  Perfect  bosh  !"  repeated  the  School-mas- 
ter. "  And  only  shows  how  in  weak  hands 
so  beautiful  a  thing  as  the  sonnet  can  be 
made  ridiculous." 

"What's  wrong  with  it?"  asked  the  Idiot. 

"  It  doesn't  contain  any  thought — or  if  it 
does,  no  one  can  tell  what  the  thought  is. 
Your  rhymes  are  atrocious.  Your  phrase- 
ology is  ridiculous.  The  whole  thing  is  bad. 
You'll  never  get  anybody  to  print  it." 

"  I  do  not  intend  to  try,"  said  the  Idiot, 
meekly. 

"  You  are  wise,"  said  the  School-master, 
"  to  take  my  advice  for  once." 

"  No,  it  is  not  your  advice  that  restrains 
me,"  said  the  Idiot,  dryly.  ''  It  is  the 
fact  that  this  sonnet  has  already  been 
printed." 


"  In  the  name  of  Letters,  where  ?"  cried 
the  School- master. 

"  In  the  collected  works  of  William  Shake- 
speare," replied  the  Idiot,  quietly. 

The  Poet  laughed  ;  Mrs.  Smithers's  eyes 
filled  with  tears ;  and  the  School-master  for 
once  had  absolutely  nothing  to  say. 


XI 

"  Do  you  believe,  Mr.  Whitechoker,"  saic 
the  Idiot,  taking  his  place  at  the  .table,  and 
holding  his  plate  up  to  the  light,  apparently 
to  see  whether  or  not  it  was  immaculate, 
whereat  the  landlady  sniffed  contemptu- 
ously—  "do  you  believe  that  the  love  of 
money  is  the  root  of  all  evil  ?" 

"  I  have  always  been  of  that  impression," 
returned  Mr.  Whitechoker,  pleasantly.  "  In 
fact,  I  am  sure  of  it,"  he  added.  "  There  is 
no  evil  thing  in  this  world,  sir,  that  cannot 
be  traced  back  to  a  point  where  greed  is 
found  to  be  its  main-spring  and  the  source 
of  its  strength." 

"  Then  how  do  you  reconcile  this  with 
the  scriptural  story  of  the  forbidden  fruit? 
Do  you  think  the  apples  referred  to  were 
figures  of  speech,  the  true  import  of  which 
was  that  Adam  and  Eve  had  their  eyes  on 
the  original  surplus  ?" 

"  Well,  of  course,  there  you  begin  to — 


ah — you  seem  to  me  to  be  going  back  to 
the — er — the — ah — ' 

"Original  root  of  all  evil,"  prompted  the 
Idiot,  calmly. 

"  Precisely,"  returned  Mr.  Whitechoker, 
with  a  sigh  of  relief.  "  Mrs.  Smithers,  I 
think  I'll  have  a  dash  of  hot-water  in  my 
coffee  this  morning."  Then,  with  a  nervous 
glance  towards  the  Idiot,  he  added,  address- 
ing the  Bibliomaniac,  "  I  think  it  looks  like 
rain." 

"  Referring  to  the  coffee,  Mr.  White- 
choker?"  queried  the  Idiot,  not  disposed  to 
let  go  of  his  victim  quite  so  easily. 

"Ah  —  I  don't  quite  follow  you,"  replied 
the  Minister,  with  some  annoyance. 

"  You  said  something  looked  like  rain, 
and  I  asked  you  if  the  thing  you  referred  to 
was  the  coffee,  for  I  was  disposed  to  agree 
with  you,"  said  the  Idiot. 

"  I  am  sure,"  put  in  Mrs.  Smithers,  "that 
a  gentleman  of  Mr.  Whitechoker 's  refine- 
ment would  not  make  any  such  insinuation, 
sir.  He  is  not  the  man  to  quarrel  with  what 
is  set  before  him." 

"  I  ask  your  pardon,  madam,"  returned 
the  Idiot,  politely.  "  I  hope  that  I  am  not 


the  man  to  quarrel  with  my  food,  either. 
Indeed,  I  make  it  a  rule  to  avoid  unpleas- 
antness of  all  sorts,  particularly  with  the 
weak,  under  which  category  we  find  your 
coffee.  I  simply  wish  to  know  to  what  Mr. 
Whitechoker  refers  when  he  says  '  it  looks 
like  rain.'  " 

"  I  mean,  of  course,"  said  the  Minister, 
with  as  much  calmness  as  he  could  com- 
mand—and that  was  not  much — "  I  mean 
the  day.  The  day  looks  as  if  it  might  be 
rainy." 

"  Any  one  with  a  modicum  of  brain  knows 
what  you  meant,  Mr.  Whitechoker,"  volun- 
teered the  School-master. 

"  Certainly,"  observed  the  Idiot,  scraping 
the  butter  from  his  toast ;  "  but  to  those 
who  have  more  than  a  modicum  of  brains 
my  reverend  friend's 'remark  was  not  en- 
tirely clear.  If  I  am  talking  of  cotton,  and 
a  gentleman  chooses  to  state  that  it  looks 
like  snow,  I  know  exactly  what  he  means. 
He  doesn't  mean  that  the  day  looks  like 
snow,  however ;  he  refers  to  the  cotton. 
Mr.  Whitechoker,  talking  about  coffee, 
chooses  to  state  that  it  looks  like  rain, 
which  it  undoubtedly  does.  I,  realizing 


that,  as  Mrs.  Smithers  says,  it  is  not  the 
gentleman's  habit  to  attack  too  violently 
the  food  which  is  set  before  him,  manifest 
some  surprise,  and,  giving  the  gentleman 
the  benefit  of  the  doubt,  afford  him  an  op- 
portunity to  set  himself  right." 

"  Change  the  subject,"  said  the  Biblio- 
maniac, curtly. 

"  With  pleasure,"  answered  the  Idiot,  fill- 
ing his  glass  with  cream.  "  We'll  change 
the  subject,  or  the  object,  or  anything  you 
choose.  We'll  have  another  breakfast,  or 
another  variety  of  biscuits  frappt — any- 
thing, in  short,  to  keep  peace  at  the  table. 
Tell  me,  Mr.  Pedagog,"  he  added,  "  is  the 
use  of  the  word  '  it,'  in  the  sentence  '  it  looks 
like  rain,'  perfectly  correct  ?" 

"  I  don't  know  why  it  is  not,"  returned 
the  School-master,  uneasily.  *  He  was  not 
at  all  desirous  of  parleying  with  the  Idiot. 

"  And  is  it  correct  to  suppose  that  •  it ' 
refers  to  the  day — is  the  day  supposed  to 
look  like  rain  ? — or  do  we  simply  use  '  it '  to 
express  a  condition  which  confronts  us?" 

"  It  refers  to  the  latter,  of  course." 

"  Then  the  full  text  of  Mr.  Whitechoker's 
remark  is,  I  suppose,  that  '  the  rainy  condi- 


tion  of  the  atmosphere  which  confronts  us 
looks  like  rain  ?'  " 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  so,"  sighed  the  School- 
master, wearily. 

"  Rather  an  unnecessary  sort  of  statement 
that !"  continued  the  Idiot.  "  It's  some- 
thing like  asserting  that  a  man  looks  like 
himself,  or,  as  in  the  case  of  a  child's 
primer— 

"'See  the  cat?' 

"  '  Yes,  I  see  the  cat.' 

"  '  What  is  the  cat  ?" 

" '  The  cat  is  a  cat.     Scat  cat !'  " 

At  this  even  Mrs.  Smithers  smiled. 

"  I  don't  agree  with  Mr.  Pedagog,"  put  in 
the  Bibliomaniac,  after  a  pause. 

Here  the  School  -  master  shook  his  head 
warningly  at  the  Bibliomaniac,  as  if  to  indi- 
cate that  he  was  not  in  good  form. 

"So  I  observe,"  remarked  the  Idiot. 
"  You  have  upset  him  completely.  See  how 
Mr.  Pedagog  trembles  ?"  he  added,  address- 
ing the  genial  gentleman  who  occasionally 
imbibed. 

"  I  don't  mean  that  way,"  sneered  the 
Bibliomaniac,  bound  to  set  Mr.  Whitechoker 
straight.  "  I  mean  that  the  word  '  it,'  as  em* 


[   BELIEVE  YOU'D   BLOW  OUT  THE  GAS  IN  YOUR 
BED-ROOM  '  " 


ployed  in  that  sentence,  stands  for  day.  The 
day  looks  like  rain." 

"  Did  you  ever  see  a  day  ?"  queried  the 
Idiot. 

"  Certainly  I  have,"  returned  the  Biblio- 
maniac. 

"  What  does  it  look  like  ?"  was  the  calmly 
put  question. 

The  Bibliomaniac's  impatience  was  here 
almost  too  great  for  safety,  and  the  manner 
in  which  his  face  colored  aroused  consid- 
erable  interest  in  the  breast  of  the  Doctor, 
who  was  a  good  deal  of  a  specialist  in 
apoplexy. 

"  Was  it  a  whole  day  you  saw,  or  only  a 
half-day  ?"  persisted  the  Idiot. 

"  You  may  think  you  are  very  funny," 
retorted  the  Bibliomaniac.  "  I  think  you 
are — " 

"Now  don't  get  angry,"  returned  the 
Idiot.  "There  are  two  or  three  things 
I  do  not  know,  and  I'm  anxious  to  learn. 
I'd  like  to  know  how  a  day  looks  to  one 
to  whom  it  is  a  visible  object.  If  it  is  visi- 
ble, is  it  tangible  ?  and,  if  so,  how  does  it  feel  ?" 

"  The  visible  is  always  tangible,"  asserted 
the  School-master,  recklessly. 


"How  about  a  red  -  hot  stove,  or  mani- 
fest indignation,  or  a  view  from  a  mountain- 
top,  or,  as  in  the  case  of  the  young  man  in 
the  novel  who  '  suddenly  waked,'  and, '  look- 
0ng  anxiously  about  him,  saw  no  one?'"  re- 
turned the  Idiot,  imperturbably. 

"  Tut !"  ejaculated  the  Bibliomaniac.  "  If 
I  had  brains  like  yours,  I'd  blow  them  out." 

"  Yes,  I  think  you  would,"  observed  the 
Idiot,  folding  up  his  napkin.  "  You're  just 
the  man  to  do  a  thing  like  that.  I  believe 
you'd  blow  out  the  gas  in  your  bedroom 
if  there  wasn't  a  sign  over  it  requesting 
you  not  to."  And  filling  his  match-box 
from  the  landlady's  mantel  supply,  the  Idiot 
hurried  from  the  room,  and  soon  after  left 
the  house. 


XII 

"  IF  my  father  hadn't  met  with  reverses — ' 
the  Idiot  began. 

"  Did  you  really  have  a.  father  ?"  interrupt- 
ed the  School-master.  "  I  thought  you  were 
one  of  these  self-made  Idiots.  How  terri- 
ble it  must  be  for  a  man  to  think  that  he  is 
responsible  for  you  !" 

"Yes,"  rejoined  the  Idiot;  "my  father 
finds  it  rather  hard  to  stand  up  under  his 
responsibility  for  me  ;  but  he  is  a  brave  old 
gentleman,  and  he  manages  to  bear  the  bur- 
den very  well  with  the  aid  of  my  mother — 
for  I  have  a  mother,  too,  Mr.  Pedagog.  A 
womanly  mother  she  is,  too,  with  all  the  nat- 
ural follies,  such  as  fondness  for  and  belief  in 
her  boy.  Why,  it  would  soften  your  heart 
to  see  how  she  looks  on  me.  She  thinks  ] 
am  the  most  everlastingly  brilliant  man  she 
ever  knew — excepting  father,  of  course,  who 
has  always  been  a  hero  of  heroes  in  her  eyes, 
because  he  never  rails  at  misfortune,  never 


spoke  an  unkind  word  to  her  in  his  life,  and 
just  lives  gently  along  and  waiting  for  the 
end  of  all  things." 

"  Do  you  think  it  is  right  in  you  to  de- 
ceive your  mother  in  this  way — making  her 
think  you  a  young  Napoleon  of  intellect 
when  you  know  you  are  an  Idiot  ?"  observed 
the  Bibliomaniac,  with  a  twinkle  in  his  eye. 

"  Why  certainly  I  do,"  returned  the  Idiot, 
calmly.  "  It's  my  place  to  make  the  old 
folks  happy  if  I  can ;  and  if  thinking  me  nine- 
teen different  kinds  of  a  genius  is  going  to 
fill  my  mother's  heart  with  happiness,  I'm 
going  to  let  her  think  it.  What's  the  use 
of  destroying  other  people's  idols  even  if  we 
do  know  them  to  be  hollow  mockeries  ?  Do 
you  think  you  do  a  praiseworthy  act,  for  in- 
stance, when  you  kick  over  the  heathen's 
stone  gods  and  leave  him  without  any  at  all  ? 
You  may  not  have  noticed  it,  but  I  have — 
that  it  is  easier  to  pull  down  an  idol  than  it 
is  to  rear  an  ideal.  I  have  had  idols  shat- 
tered myself,  and  I  haven't  found  that  the 
pedestals  they  used  to  occupy  have  been 
rented  since.  They  are  there  yet  and  emp- 
ty—standing as  monuments  to  what  oncf 
seemed  good  to  me — and  I'm  no  happier  noi 


no  better  for  being  disillusioned.  So  it  is 
with  my  mother.  I  let  her  go  on  and  think 
me  perfect.  It  does  her  good,  and  it  does 
me  good  because  it  makes  me  try  to  live 
up  to  that  idea  of  hers  as  to  what  I  am.  If 
she  had  the  same  opinion  of  me  that  we  all 
have  she'd  be  the  most  miserable  woman 
in  the  world." 

"  We  don't  all  think  so  badly  of  you,"  said 
the  Doctor,  rather  softened  by  the  Idiot's 
remarks. 

"  No,"  put  in  the  Bibliomaniac.  "  You  are 
all  right.  You  breathe  normally,  and  you 
have  nice  blue  eyes.  You  are  graceful  and 
pleasant  to  look  upon,  and  if  you'd  been 
born  dumb  we'd  esteem  you  very  highly.  It 
is  only  your  manners  and  your  theories  that 
we  don't  like ;  but  even  in  these  we  are  dis- 
posed to  believe  that  you  are  a  well-mean- 
ing child." 

"  That  is  precisely  the  way  to  put  it,"  as- 
sented the  School-master.  "  You  are  harm- 
less even  when  most  annoying.  For  my  own 
part,  I  think  the  most  objectionable  feature 
about  you  is  that  you  suffer  from  that  un- 
fortunately not  uncommon  malady,  extreme 
youth.  You  are  young  for  your  age,  and  if 


you  only  wouldn't  talk,  I  think  we  should 
get  on  famously  together." 

"  You  overwhelm  me  with  your  compli- 
ments," said  the  Idiot.  "  I  am  sorry  I  am 
so  young,  but  I  cannot  be  brought  to  believe 
that  that  is  my  own  fault.  One  must  live  to 
attain  age,  and  how  the  deuce  can  one  live 
when  one  boards  ?" 

As  no  one  ventured  to  reply  to  this  ques- 
tion, the  force  of  which  very  evidently,  how- 
ever, was  fully  appreciated  by  Mrs.  Smithers, 
the  Idiot  continued : 

"  Youth  is  thrust  upon  us  in  our  infancy, 
and  must  be  endured  until  such  a  time  as 
Fate  permits  us  to  account  ourselves  cured. 
It  swoops  down  upon  us  when  we  have 
neither  the  strength  nor  the  brains  to  resent 
it.  Of  course  there  are  some  superior  per- 
sons in  this  world  who  never  were  young. 
Mr.  Pedagog,  I  doubt  not,  was  ushered  into 
this  world  with  all  three  sets  of  teeth  cut, 
and  not  wailing  as  most  infants  are,  but  dis- 
cussing the  most  abstruse  philosophica? 
problems.  His  fairy  stories  were  told  him, 
if  ever,  in  words  often  syllables;  and  his  fa- 
ther's first  remark  to  him  was  doubtless  an 
inquiry  as  to  his  opinion  on  the  subject  of 


'I   THOUGHT  MY   FATHER   A   MEAN-SPIRITED  ASSASSIN7 


Latin  and  Greek  in  our  colleges.  It's  all 
right  to  be  this  kind  of  a  baby  if  you  like 
that  sort  of  thing.  For  my  part,  I  rejoice 
to  think  that  there  was  once  a  day  when  I 
thought  my  father  a  mean-spirited  assassin, 
because  he  wouldn't  tie  a  string  to  the  moon 
and  let  me  make  it  rise  and  set  as  suited 
my  sweet  will.  Babies  of  Mr.  Pedagog's 
sort  are  fortunately  like  angel's  visits,  few 
and  far  between.  In  spite  of  his  stand  in 
the  matter,  though,  I  can't  help  thinking 
there  was  a  great  deal  of  truth  in  a  rhyme 
a  friend  of  mine  got  off  on  Youth.  It  fits 
the  case.  He  said  : 

"  '  Youth  is  a  state  of  being  we  attain 

In  early  years;  to  some  'tis  but  a  crime — 
And,  like  the  mumps,  most  aged  men  complain, 
It  can't  be  caught, alas!  a  second  time.'" 

"  Your  rhymes  are  interesting,  and  your 
reasoning,  as  usual,  is  faulty,"  said  the 
School-master.  "  I  passed  a  very  pleasant 
childhood,  though  it  was  a  childhood  devot- 
ed, as  you  have  insinuated,  to  serious  rather 
than  to  flippant  pursuits.  I  wasn't  particu- 
larly fond  of  tag  and  hide-and-seek,  nor  do 
I  think  that  even  as  an  infant  I  ever  cried 
for  the  moon." 


"  It  would  have  expanded  your  chest  if 
you  had,  Mr.  Pedagog,"  observed  the  Idiot, 
quietly. 

"  So  it  would,  but  I  never  found  myself 
short-winded,  sir,"  retorted  the  School-mas- 
ter, with  some  acerbity. 

"  That  is  evident ;  but  go  on,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  You  never  passed  a  childish  youth 
nor  a  youthful  childhood,  and  therefore 
what?" 

"  Therefore,  in  my  present  condition,  I  am 
normally  contented.  I  have  no  youthful  fol- 
lies to  look  back  upon,  no  indiscretions  to 
regret ;  I  never  knowingly  told  a  lie,  and — ' 

"All  of  which  proves  that  you  never  were 
young,"  put  in  the  Idiot ;  "  and  you  will  ex- 
cuse me  if  I  say  it,  but  my  father  is  the 
model  for  me  rather  than  so  exalted  a  per- 
sonage as  yourself.  He  is  still  young,  though 
turned  seventy,  and  I  don't  believe  on  his 
own  account  there  ever  was  a  boy  who 
played  hookey  more,  who  prevaricated  of- 
tener,  who  purloined  others'  fruits  with 
greater  frequency  than  he.  He  was  guilty 
of  every  crime  in  the  calendar  of  youth  ;  and 
if  there  is  one  thing  that  delights  him  more 
than  another,  it  is  to  sit  on  a  winter's  night 


before  the  crackling  log  and  tell  us  yarns 
about  his  youthful  follies  and  his  boyhood 
indiscretions." 

"But  is  he  normally  a  happy  man?" 
queried  the  School-master. 

"  No." 

"  Ah  !" 

"  No.  He's  an  ^normally  happy  man,  be- 
cause he's  got  his  follies  and  indiscretions 
to  look  back  upon  and  not  forward  to." 

"  Ahem  !"  said  Mrs.  Smithers. 

"  Dear  me!"  ejaculated  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

Mr.  Pedagog  said  nothing,  and  the  break 
fast-room  was  soon  deserted. 


XIII 

THERE  was  an  air  of  suppressed  excite- 
ment about  Mrs.  Smithers  and  Mr.  Pedagog 
as  they  sat  down  to  breakfast.  Something 
had  happened,  but  just  what  that  something 
was  no  one  as  yet  knew,  although  the  ge- 
nial old  gentleman  had  a  sort  of  notion  as 
to  what  it  was. 

"  Pedagog  has  been  good-natured  enough 
for  an  engaged  man  for  nearly  a  week  now," 
he  whispered  to  the  Idiot,  who  had  asked 
him  what  he  supposed  was  up,  "  and  I  have 
a  half  idea  that  Mrs.  S.  has  at  last  brought 
him  to  the  point  of  proposing." 

"  It's  the  other  way,  I  imagine,"  returned 
the  Idiot. 

"  You  don't  really  think  she  has  rejected 
him,  do  you?"  queried  the  genial  old  gen- 
tleman. 

"  Oh  no  ;  not  by  a  great  deal.  I  .mean 
that  I  think  it  very  likely  that  he  has  brought 
her  to  the  point.  This  is  leap-year,  you 
know,"  said  the  Idiot. 


"  Well,  if  I  were  a  betting  man,  which  I 
haven't  been  since  night  before  last,  I'd  lay 
you  a  wager  that  they're  engaged,"  said  the 
old  gentleman. 

"I'm  glad  you've  given  up  betting,"  re- 
joined the  Idiot,  "because  I'm  sure  I'd  take 
the  bet  if  you  offered  it— and  then  I  believe 
I'd  lose." 

"We  are  to  have  Philadelphia  spring 
chickens  this  morning,  gentlemen,"  said 
Mrs.  Smithers,  beaming  upon  all  at  the  ta- 
ble. "  It's  a  special  treat." 

"  Which  we  all  appreciate,  my  dear  Mrs. 
Smithers,"  observed  the  Idiot,  with  a  cour- 
teous bow  to  his  landlady.  "  And,  by  the 
way,  why  is  it  that  Philadelphia  spring 
chickens  do  not  appear  until  autumn,  do  you 
suppose  ?  Is  it  because  Philadelphia  spring 
doesn't  come  around  until  it  is  autumn  ev- 
erywhere else  ?" 

"  No,  I  think  not,"  said  the  Doctor.  "  I 
think  it  is  because  Philadelphia  spring 
chickens  are  not  sufficiently  hardened  to  be 
able  to  stand  the  strain  of  exportation  much 
before  September,  or  else  Philadelphia  peo- 
ple do  not  get  so  sated  with  such  delicacies 
as  to  permit  any  of  the  crop  to  go  into  other 


'  MRS.  S.   BROUGHT   HIM   TO  THE  POINT  OF   PROPOSING  ' 


than  Philadelphia  markets  before  that  pe- 
riod. For  my  part,  I  simply  love  them." 

"So  do  I,"  said  the  Idiot;  "and  if  Mrs. 
Smithers  will  pardon  me  for  expressing  a 
preference  for  any  especial  part  of  the  piece 
de  resistance,  I  will  state  to  her  that  if,  in 
helping  me,  she  will  give  me  two  drum- 
sticks, a  pair  of  second  joints,  and  plenty  of 
the  white  meat,  I  shall  be  very  happy." 

"You  ought  to  have  said  so  yesterday," 
said  the  School-master,  with  a  surprisingly 
genial  laugh.  "  Then  Mrs.  Smithers  could 
have  prepared  an  individual  chicken  for 
you." 

"  That  would  be  too  much,"  returned  the 
Idiot, "and  I  should  really  hesitate  to  eat 
too  much  spring  chicken.  I  never  did  it  in 
my  life,  and  don't  know  what  the  effect 
would  be.  Would  it  be  harmful,  Doctor  ?" 

"  I  really  do  not  know  how  it  would  be," 
answered  the  Doctor.  <f-In  all  my  wide  ex- 
perience I  have  never  found  a  case  of  the 
kind." 

"  It's  very  rarely  that  one  gets  too  much 
spring  chicken,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker.  "  I 
haven't  had  any  experience  with  patients, 
as  my  friend  the  Doctor  has;  but  I  have 


lived  in  many  boarding-houses,  and  I  have 
never  yet  known  of  any  one  even  getting 
enough." 

"  Well,  perhaps  we  shall  have  all  we  want 
this  morning,"  said  Mrs.  Smithers.  "  I  hope 
so,  at  any  rate,  for  I  wish  this  day  to  be  a 
memorable  one  in  our  house.  Mr.  Pedagog 
has  something  to  tell  you.  John,  will  you 
announce  it  now  ?" 

"  Did  you  hear  that  ?"  whispered  the  Idiot 
"  She  called  him  'John.'" 

"Yes,"  said  the  genial  old  gentleman. 
"  I  didn't  know  Pedagog  had  a  first  name 
before." 

"  Certainly,  my  dear — that  is,  my  very  dear 
Mrs.  Smithers,"  stammered  the  School-mas- 
ter, getting  red  in  the  face.  "  The  fact  is, 
gentlemen — ahem ! — I — er — we — er — that  is, 
of  course — er — Mrs.  Smithers  has  er — ahem  ! 
— Mrs.  Smithers  has  asked  me  to  be  her — 
I  —  er  —  I  should  say  I  have  asked  Mrs. 
Smithers  to  be  my  husb  —  my  wife,  and— 
er — she — " 

"  Hoorah !"  cried  the  Idiot,  jumping  up 
from  the  table  and  grasping  Mr.  Pedagog 
by  the  hand.  "  Hoorah !  You've  got  in 
ahead  of  us,  old  man,  but  we  are  just  as 


glad  when  we  think  of  your  good-fortune. 
Your  gain  may  be  our  loss  —  but  what  of 
that  where  the  happiness  of  our  dear  land- 
lady is  at  stake?" 

Mrs.  Smithers  glanced  coyly  at  the  Idiot 
and  smiled. 

"  Thank  you,"  said  the  School-master. 

"  You  are  welcome,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  Mrs. 
Smithers,  you  will  also  permit  me  to  felici- 
tate you  upon  this  happy  event.  I,  who 
have  so  often  differed  with  Mr.  Pedagog 
upon  matters  of  human  knowledge,  am 
forced  to  admit  that  upon  this  occasion  he 
has  shown  such  eminently  good  sense  that 
you  are  fortunate,  indeed,  to  have  won  him." 

"  Again  I  thank  you,"  said  the  School- 
master. "  You  are  a  very  sensible  person 
yourself,  my  dear  Idiot;  perhaps  my  fail- 
ure to  appreciate  you  at  times  in  the  past 
has  been  due  to  your  brilliant  qualities, 
which  have  so  dazzled  me  that  I  have  been 
unable  to  see  you  as  you  really  are." 

"  Here  are  the  chickens,"  said  Mrs.  Smith- 
ers. 

"  Ah  !"  ejaculated  the  Idiot.  "  What 
lucky  fellows  we  are,  to  be  sure !  I  hope, 
Mrs.  Smithers,  now  that  Mr.  Pedagog  has 


:<  HOOKAH  I'  CRIED  THE  IDIOT,  GRASPING  MR.  PBDAGOG  BY 
THE  HAND" 


cut  us  all  out,  you  will  at  least  be  a  sister 
to  the  rest  of  us,  and  let  us  live  at  home." 

"  There  is  to  be  no  change,"  said  Mrs. 
Smithers — "at  least,  I  hope  not,  except  that 
Mr.  Pedagog  will  take  a  more  active  part 
in  the  management  of  our  home." 

"  I  don't  envy  him  that,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  We  shall  be  severe  critics,  and  it  will  be 
hard  work  for  him  to  manage  affairs  bet- 
ter than  you  did,  Mrs.  Smithers." 

"  Mary,  get  me  a  larger  cup  for  the  Idiot's 
coffee,"  said  Mrs.  Smithers. 

"  Let's  all  retire  from  business,"  suggested 
the  Idiot,  after  the  other  guests  had  ex- 
pressed their  satisfaction  with  the  turn  affairs 
had  taken.  "  Let's  retire  from  business,  and 
change  the  Smithers  Home  for  Boarders 
into  an  Educational  Institution." 

"  For  what  purpose  ?"  queried  the  Biblio- 
maniac. 

"  Everything  is  so  lovely  now,"  explained 
the  Idiot,  "that  I  feel  as  though  I  never 
wanted  to  leave  the  house  again,  even  to 
win  a  fortune.  If  we  turn  it  into  a  col- 
lege and  instruct  youth,  we  need  never  go 
outside  the  front  door  excepting  for  pleas- 
ure." 


"  Where  will  the  money  and  the  in- 
structors  come  from?"  asked  Mr.  White- 
choker. 

"  Money?  From  pupils  ;  and  after  we  get 
going  maybe  somebody  will  endow  us.  As 
for  instructors,  I  think  we  know  enough  to 
be  instructors  ourselves,"  replied  the  Idiot. 
"  For  instance :  Pedagog's  University.  John 
Pedagog,  President ;  Alonzo  B.  White- 
choker,  Chaplain ;  Mrs.  Smithers-Pedagog, 
Matron.  For  Professor  of  Belles  -  lettres, 
the  Bibliomaniac,  assisted  by  the  Poet; 
Medical  Lectures  by  Dr.  Capsule;  Chem- 
istry taught  by  our  genial  friend  who  occa- 
sionally imbibes ;  Chair  in  General  Infor- 
mation, your  humble  servant.  Why,  we 
would  be  overrun  with  pupils  and  money 
in  less  than  a  year." 

"A  very  good  idea,"  returned  Mr.  Peda- 
gog. "  I  have  often  thought  that  a  nice  lit- 
tle school  could  be  started  here  to  advan- 
tage, though  I  must  confess  that  I  had 
different  ideas  on  the  subject  of  the  in- 
structors. You,  my  dear  Idiot,  would  be  a 
great  deal  more  useful  as  a  Professor  Emer- 
itus." 

"  Hm  !"said  the  Idiot.   "  It  sounds  mighty 


well — I've  no  doubt  I  should  like  it.  What 
is  a  Professor  Emeritus,  Mr.  Pedagog  ?" 

"  He  is  a  professor  who  is  paid  a  salary  for 
doing  nothing." 

The  whole  table  joined  in  a  laugh,  the 
Idiot  included. 

"  By  Jove !  Mr.  Pedagog,"  he  said,  as  soon 
as  he  could  speak,  "  you  are  just  dead  right 
about  that.  That's  the  place  of  places  for 
me.  Salary  and  nothing  to  do !  Oh,  how 
I'd  love  it !" 

The  rest  of  the  breaktast  was  eaten  in 
silence.  The  spring  chickens  were  too  good 
and  too  plentiful  to  admit  of  much  waste  of 
time  in  conversation.  At  the  conclusion  of 
the  meal  the  Idiot  rose  from  the  table,  and, 
after  again  congratulating  Mr.  Pedagog  and 
his  fiancee,  announced  that  he  was  going  to 
see  his  employer. 

"On  Sunday?"  queried  Mrs.  Smithers. 

"  Yes ;  I  want  him  to  write  me  a  recom- 
mendation as  a  man  who  can  do  nothing 
beautifully." 

"  And  why,  pray  ?"  asked  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  I'm  going  to  apply  to  the  Trustees  of 
Columbia  College  the  first  thing  to-morrow 
morning  for  an  Emeritus  Professorship,  for 


if  anybody  can  do  nothing  and  draw  money 
for  it  gracefully  I'm  the  man.  Wall  Street 
is  too  wearing  on  my  nerves,"  he  replied. 

And  in  a  moment  he  was  gone. 

"  I  like  him,"  said  Mrs.  Smithers. 

"  So  do  I,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog.  He  isn "t 
half  the  idiot  he  thinks  he  is." 


THE  END 


BY  LILIAN    BELL 


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